
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

(ilptp.-©apjrigljt Ifru_ 

Shelf 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 













I 


4 


t- 










4 


4 








































































THE MADONNA OF ST. SIXTUS 
From the Paint mg by Raphael. 















JESUS CHRIST 


1/ 


, OUR SAVIOUR’S 
AND 


PERSON, MISSION, 
SPIRIT 


FROM THE FRENCH^OF THE 

Reverend FATHER DIDON, O. P. 


EDITED BY 

Right Reverend BERNARD O’REILLY, D. D.; D. Lit. (Laval) 

DOMESTIC PRELATE OF HIS HOLINESS 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

His Eminence JAMES, CARDINAL GIBBONS 

ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE 


WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS 


VOL. I 


^37vV ^ 

V c. 


/2L 


NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1891 


$,M 0 \ 


>55 


Copyright, 1891, 

.By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 





pzJrap i % * 

4/W 


PREFACE. 


The new Life of Christ, by the distinguished Domini¬ 
can, P&re Didon, has already—in the original French— 
reached within a few months its twentieth edition. 

So unprecedented a success is the best justification for 
presenting it in these volumes to the English-reading pub¬ 
lic, and we are satisfied that it will be welcomed in this 
country by Christians of all denominations as a valuable 
addition to the religious literature of the day. 

It is a remarkable fact that the last fifty years have 
witnessed more attempts to portray the person and life of 
the Redeemer of mankind than all the other Christian ages 
put together. This is doubtless due in a great measure to 
the historical spirit which forms one of the most prominent 
mental characteristics of the century. But its principal 
cause is to be looked for elsewhere, and we shall find it in 
the variety of beliefs which claim to represent true Chris¬ 
tianity amongst us, each one being naturally led to give a 
presentation of the life and doctrine of the Founder in 
harmony with its own teachings. Even those who have 
ceased to believe in the supernatural character of Chris¬ 
tianity are confronted with the person and work of Christ 
as the greatest factors of history, and some attempt must 
be made to account for them. Hence the numbers of 
“ Lives of Christ ” which come to us from abroad or take 


/ 



IV 


PREFACE. 


rise amongst us, corresponding to every shade of belief or 
unbelief, and, as a consequence, with differences sometimes 
so radical, that if the question made of old by the Master 
himself were to be repeated to us, “ Whom do men say that 
the Son of Man is ? ” our reply would have to show Him 
proclaimed by turns the central figure of history and a half¬ 
legendary myth, the noblest ideal of humanity and an un¬ 
practical enthusiast, a dreamer and the eternal Son of the 
eternal God. 

In the present work He is shown to us principally as 
the Son of Man—that is, in His human aspect, and as He 
appeared to His contemporaries. 

In the ages ol Faith men sought not to see Him thus. 
While fully realizing the historical truth of the Gospel 
narrative, their deep reverence in a way forbade them to 
dispel the haze which time had gathered around the more 
accidental circumstances of the life of Our Lord. Not so 
with us. At the same time that we dwell lovingly on the 
examples of Christ, and seek for guidance and strength in 
His divine teachings, we want to see Him live and move in 
His own time, amid His real surroundings; and, with the 
new historical methods and a more familiar knowledge of 
what is far distant and long past, we strive to reconstruct 
the living features of the home, the country, the people, 
and all the other environments amid which the Saviour 
chose to accomplish His blessed work. 

This our present historian has not failed to do. Com¬ 
bining the abundant materials collected by so many others 
with his own personal observations among the unchanging 
physical and social features of Eastern countries and East¬ 
ern customs, he succeeds in bringing up before us a vivid 
picture of Judsea and Galilee: of the Jewish people with 
their various religious divisions and their common aspira- 


PREFACE. 


V 


tions and hopes; the galling yoke of the Romans which 
they so impatiently bore, and their readiness to grasp at 
any means ol deliverance—in a word, their whole politi¬ 
cal, religious, and moral condition when Christ appeared 
amongst them. 

A familiar knowledge of such details is invaluable, for 
only by means of it can many particulars of the Gospel be 
properly understood. But, what is still more important, it 
enables us fully to account for many things which seem 
inexplicably missing in the sacred narrative. 

We refer in particular to the indistinctness of certain 
doctrines which have become, nevertheless, the light and 
life of the Church in subsequent ages. Thus, for instance, 
how often has it been, to the thoughtful reader of the 
Gospel, a subject of wonder and perplexity that so funda¬ 
mental a doctrine as that of the divinity of Our Lord 
should not have been set forth by Him more prominently 
and more distinctly ! But, when we come to know the 
circumstances in which He spoke, we realize at once the 
wisdom, not to say the necessity, of His revealing but 
gradually, and often indirectly, the deep and solemn secret 
of His divine nature. 

In reality, Christ, though universally expected at the 
time of His coming, appeared among men entirely different 
from what was anticipated. The Messiah of the Jewish 
imagination was to be a powerful conqueror; he was to 
lift up the chosen people from their abasement, to give 
them sway over their enemies, and be himself their Lord 
and king. But that he should be a divine person—God 
himself in human form, living in their midst—seems to have 
been entirely foreign to their thoughts. True, a careful 
study of the prophecies might have taught them to look 
for more than a man in the coming Redeemer, and in the 


VI 


PREFACE. 


apocryphal writings of the period we have proof of ob¬ 
scure yet real anticipations of a similar kind among the 
more enlightened. But to the bulk of the people, includ¬ 
ing some of the most religious, the thought of substantially 
identifying one who appeared amongst them as a man with 
their great Jehovah would have seemed a horrible blas¬ 
phemy. 

Consequently, unless Christ chose in His limitless power 
to transform all at once the minds of a whole people and 
make them welcome what was hitherto entirely out of har¬ 
mony with their thoughts—as to suddenly show forth His 
hidden greatness, so as to crush all resistance—methods 
entirely opposed to the economy and spirit of His work—it 
only remained for Him to lead on, slowly and gently, the 
minds of His followers, and through them, subsequently, 
mankind at large, to a full comprehension of His myste¬ 
rious nature. 

And this is just what we find Him doing in the Gospel 
narrative. Like His Messiahship, like the kingdom purely 
spiritual which He proposes to establish, His divine nature 
is commonly no more than hinted at, or left to be gathered 
from His attitude and actions, or, if suddenly it shines forth, 
it is only for an instant. In some cases it would almost 
seem as if the Saviour involuntarily betrayed His secret 
rather than deliberately revealed it. Hence, when formally 
questioned on the subject, He answers ambiguously, or 
leads off the thoughts of His hearers in another direction. 
Yet all the time His real character was impressing itself, un¬ 
consciously it may be, on the minds of His disciples. Even 
from the outset, His miracles had raised Him up in their 
estimation to the dignity of a Prophet or Divine Messenger. 
The startling character of the wonders He wrought, their 
vast range, extending over all Nature and reaching down 


PREFACE. 


vii 


into the regions of death itself—the very naturalness with 
which they seemed to be accomplished—all was calculated 
to suggest to those who habitually witnessed them the 
hidden presence of the Creator himself. 

So also the tone of supreme authority which the great 
Teacher assumed in His discourses. He reasons not, nor 
does He exhort. He affirms and He commands. To the 
writer, if he may speak of himself, the Sermon on the 
Mount alone is an unmistakable revelation of His divinity, 
not because of the surpassing beauty of its doctrines, 
but because of the attitude and manner of the Teacher. 
God himself could scarce have taken a higher tone. He 
alone could, without impiety, thus gather all around 
Himself, making even religion to be loyalty to His per¬ 
son, and claim to hold in His hand the everlasting fate of 
man. 

And this is nothing exceptional. Again and again, in 
His other recorded utterances, we find the same assump¬ 
tion of divine rights—a pretension to occupy in the 
hearts of men a place which belongs to God alone— 
such a sense of His incomparable greatness, that He, the 
humble and gentle Jesus, hesitates not to proclaim un¬ 
worthy of Him and of the Gospel whoever is not ready 
to relinquish, for His sake, family, friends, country, and life 
itself. 

Whilst gathering in, day after day, the impression of 
such discourses, the disciples could hear their Master claim 
the divine prerogative of forgiving sins declare Himself 
Lord of what was most sacred to the Jew—the divine in¬ 
stitution of the Sabbath. They could see Him set aside the 
established authorities, and cleanse, as by a natural right, 
the temple, which He calls “ the house of His Father.” 
They could listen to Him as, in that same temple and in 


TREFACE. 


viii 

the presence of learned doctors and priests, He claimed 
the closest and most extraordinary share in the opera¬ 
tions and rights of God Himself—identity of action ; a 
power to give life; the right to be honored as the Father 
is honored ; the right to pronounce final and irreversi¬ 
ble judgment on all men. They knew He was wont to 
speak with all the freedom of a loving child of God as 
“ His Father,” and that on one occasion at least He had 
gone so far as to affirm that “ He and the Father were 
one.” 

In what measure they realized the full sense of such 
utterances it is not easy to determine. The enemies of 
Jesus were prompt enough to perceive their bearing, and 
we find them more than once rising up in indignant protest 
against what they call the blasphemous assumptions of the 
Teacher of Galilee. Indeed, it would seem that these were 
the grounds on which they mainly based the accusations 
which led to His condemnation and death. As for His fol¬ 
lowers, it was obvious to them that there was much more 
than they could fathom in the mysterious being who had 
led them away from their homes and held them, as it were, 
captives, wondering and delighted at all they heard and 
witnessed. Doubtless, too, they caught occasional rapid, 
transient glimpses of the great truth, as was the case with 
Peter, when, at Caesarea, he made that profession of faith 
which won the praise of Our Lord Himself. More than 
this might not have fitted in with the divine work, such as 
it had been ordained ; perhaps it would have been beyond 
what in the disciples’ human nature could have borne. As 
a fact, when we come to consider their history as a whole, 
we are led to the conclusion that the full, steady light of 
the divinity of their Master shone upon them only after 
His resurrection. 


PREFACE. 


IX 


But how brightly it then and ever after lighted up their 
thoughts and impressed itself on their utterances. “ My 
Lord and my God,” exclaimed Thomas at the feet of his 
risen Saviour; and that supreme act of faith is echoed with 
growing intensity through the Gospel of St. John, through 
the Epistles of St. Paul, through the whole thought and 
life of the early Church. Everywhere we find the great 
truth proclaimed with a directness and a power which are 
missing, because they could not find a place in the teach¬ 
ings of Christ himself. 

We have dwelt at some length on one of the difficulties 
suggested by the sacred narrative. Many more might be 
met in a similar way. Our historian disposes of several 
by the very manner in which he relates the actions and 
sayings of the Divine Teacher. Yet his object is different. 
He writes neither as an apologist nor as an exegete, but 
rather as a Christian philosopher and moralist. Hence he 
abounds in reflections which, though occasionally losing 
something of their power in the rhetorical flow of the great 
French orator, yet reveal a striking originality and depth 
of thought. 

This last feature, besides the other remarkable qualities 
of the book, can not fail to fix the attention and awaken 
the interest of a large circle of readers. There are few, if 
any, who will not be much benefited by a careful perusal 
of it. To the habitual readers of the Gospels—and we 
ardently wish that the number of such may steadily in¬ 
crease—it will prove most helpful, by the clear light it 
throws on the actions and teachings of the Redeemer, while 
it may lead back others unfamiliar with the sacred text 
itself to draw directly from that inexhaustible treasure of 
divine truth. Perhaps to more than one it may bring home 
for the first time the irresistible claims of our Saviour to 


X 


PREFACE. 


their loyalty and love, and cause them to repeat, as they 
lay down the book, the confession of the Roman centurion 
on Calvary, “ Truly this was the Son of God.” 

Baltimore, Md., 

Feast of St. John the Baptist, 

June 24, 1891. 


NOTE OF THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


The English version of Reverend Father Didon’s great 
work has been placed in my hands by the Messrs. Apple- 
ton, with a note of the London publisher, Mr. Kegan 
Paul, to the effect that “ the whole has been carefully and 
minutely revised by Father Didon himself, with the assist¬ 
ance in France of an English scholar.” 

Thus my responsibility as editor has been limited to a 
no less scrupulously “ careful and minute ” comparison of 
the version of the Scriptures selected by the translators 
with the corresponding text in the Douay Bible. No 
doctrinal error, as far as I can judge, is discernible in this 
edition. The same scrupulous care has been extended by 
me to the translation as a whole. Some needful correc¬ 
tions have been made in the plates. The approbation of 
the General of his Order, and the commendatory letter 
written to Father Didon in the name of Leo XIII, attest 
the value of this book. 

Like the most eminent prelate whose name graces 
the title-page, I consented, at the solicitation of the large- 
minded publishers, to do my share toward giving to the 
American public a Life of Our Saviour worthy of 
being welcomed into every Christian home, and calcu¬ 
lated to benefit readers of every creed and class. 

Bernard O’Reilly. 


New York, July g , iSgi . 



APPROBATION OF THE CENSORS AND 
MASTER-GENERAL OF THE DOMINICAN ORDER. 


“ By order of the Very Reverend Father Joseph-Maria Lar- 
roca, Master-General of the Friars-Preachers, we, the under¬ 
signed, have read with care the book entitled Jesus-Christ, by 
Father Didon, of the Order of Preachers, Lecturer of Sacred 
Theology. 

“ Not only is the whole doctrinal portion of this book in con¬ 
formity with the teachings of Theology, but the historical portion 
as well is nobly understood and set forth. 

“The author shows us Christ-Jesus in the surroundings amid 
which He lived, rising above them by the divinity of the purpose 
which He cherishes and of the means which He employs. If the 
author sometimes uses the language of his adversaries, he pres¬ 
ently gives us to understand that he especially aims to contend 
with them on their own ground ; and he does so successfully 
where, in particular, he calls to his aid the positive arguments of 
history in order to refute their impious a priori theories. 

“ The literary form itself, at once simple and elevated, is in 
harmony with the majesty of the subject. 

“ For the above reasons, we judge this work to be worthy of 
being given to the public.” 

Rome, March 20 , i 8 qo . 

Fr. Alberto Lepidi, Professor of Sacred Theology , 
and Prefect of Studies in the Roman College of 
St. Thojnas Aquinas. 

Fr. Joachim Berthier, O. P., Lecturer in Theology. 

Imprimatur: 

Fr. Joseph-Maria Larroca. 

(Seal of the Master-General of the Order of Preachers.) 



CONTENTS. 


VOL. I. 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION.i 


BOOK I. 

THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

CHAP. 

I.—The Time .i 

II. —The Birth of Jesus—His Conception . . . .32 

III. —The events in the life of Jesus from his birth 

TO THE RETURN FROM EGYPT.47 

IV. —Historical nature of the miraculous narratives 

of the Birth and Infancy of Jesus . . .65 

V. —Childhood and Youth of Jesus— His education . 76 

VI.— The vocation of Jesus.. .91 

BOOK II. 

JOHN THE FORERUNNER, AND THE COMING OF JESUS. 

I.—The Jews in Judaea toward the year 26—The com¬ 


ing of John the Baptist.109 

IJ.—Religious action of John the Baptist—The Bap¬ 
tism of Jesus.135 

III. —Jesus in the Desert—The Temptation . . . .153 

IV. —The beginning of the public life .... 174 

V. —Jesus at Jerusalem at the Passover of the year 

781—His first apostleship in Judaea . . . 190 

VI.—Jesus among the Samaritans.210 

VII. —Jesus the Son of God.226 






XIV 


CONTENTS, 


BOOK III. 

THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE.—THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I.—Galilee and the Kingdom of God .... 246 

II.— Jesus at Capernaum.275 

III. —The cleansing of the leper—Opposition by the 

Pharisees in Galilee.300 

IV. —The Sermon on the Mount.318 

V.—The journey to Nain.343 

VI.— The Parables of the Kingdom of God . . .361 

VII. —The supreme insult of the Pharisees .... 379 

VIII.— Instructions to the Twelve — Death of John the 

Baptist.395 

IX.— The Messianic crisis in Galilee.413 

X. —The journey of Jesus to the coasts of Tyre and 

SlDON AND THROUGH DECAPOLIS .440 

XI. —The future Death of the Messiah—The Transfig¬ 
uration .461 

XII. —The last conversations at Capernaum . . . 480 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 


VOL. I. 


FACING 

PAGB 


The Madonna of St. Sixtus 

The Immaculate Conception 

Raphael 

Frontispiece 

Murillo 

8 

The Marriage of the Virgin 

Raphael 

19 

Nazareth from the South 


30 

The Holy Night 

Correggio 

39 

Bethlehem, from the Southwest 


50 

The Adoration of the Kings 

Pfannsch tn idt 

59 

View of the Shepherds' Field, from Beth¬ 
lehem 


76 

The Flight into Egypt 

Boaguereau 

92 

Twelve-year-old Jesus on his Way to 
Jerusalem 

Mengelberg 

112 

Christ disputing with the Doctors 

Luini 

i 33 

The Temptation 

Scheffer 

162 

Mount Tabor, the Scene of the Transfigu¬ 
ration ; from “The Waters of Megiddo” 


190 

The Hill of Samaria 


215 

The Plains of Gennesaret, from Khan 
Minyeh (Capernaum) 


250 

Kefr Kenna, the Traditional Cana of 
Galilee 


280 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Christ raising the Daughter of Jairus 

Richter 

FACING 

PAGE 

313 

The Valley of the Jordan, near El Riha, 

THE MODERN JERICHO 


350 

On the Shore of the Lake, at Et Tabi- 

GHAH, THE SUPPOSED SITE OF BETHSAIDA, 

the Home of our Lord during his 
Mission in Galilee 


389 

Christ feeding the Multitude 

Murillo 

416 

Christ walking on the Sea 

Plockhorst 

422 

Northern End of the Dead Sea, near the 
Mouth of the Jordan 


437 

The Horns of Hattin (Kurun Hattin), the 
Traditional Mount of Beatitudes 


464 

The Well of Zacharias and Elisabeth, at 
Ain-Karim, the Birthplace of St. John 
the Baptist 


488 


MAPS. 

Map of Palestine in the Time of Christ i 

Plan of the Temple, at Jerusalem, in the 
Time of Christ 


194 


INTRODUCTION. 


CRITICISM AND HISTORY IN A LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 

Jesus Christ is the great name in history. There are 
others for whom men have died; he alone is adored by all 
people, in all nations, and in all times. 

He who bears this name is known throughout the world. 
Even among the savage and degenerate tribes of the 
human race, his apostles preach without ceasing that he 
died upon the cross; and the offscourings of mankind may 
be saved by loving him. Those who are neutral, in the 
modern world, recognise that none is better for the weak 
and miserable. 

The greatest intellects of the past would be forgotten if 
memorials, as palaces, obelisks or tombs ; if written testi¬ 
monies, as papyrus or parchments, bricks, columns or medals, 
had not preserved their memory. Jesus survives in the con¬ 
science of the faithful: there is his witness and indestructible 
monument. The Church founded by him fills time and space 
with his name. She knows him, she loves him, she adores 
him. As he lives in her she lives in him. He is her dogma, 
her moral law, her worship. She teaches to all without 
exception, that he is the only Son of God made man, 
conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin ; 
that he has come into the world to suffer and to die 
for our salvation, to conquer death by his resurrection; that 
he has ascended to his Father in order to prepare us a place 


li 


INTRODUCTION. 


near him ; that he will return to judge the quick and the dead, 
giving to the good life eternal, casting the bad into darkness 
and spiritual death. 

This Creed is at once dogma and history: it is the 
dogma and the popular history of Jesus. By it the believer 
can live. In a few deep and simple words, he learns that 
the greatest event in human history is the birth of Christ; 
that God loves him, since God willed to save him from evil 
and to give himself to him ; that charity is the supreme duty, 
because it was through love that his Master died ; that he must 
be unwearied in well-doing, since his Master will be his judge ; 
that he need not fear death, since his Master has overcome it, 
and because he himself is predestined to eternal life. 

The man who believes in this teaching and in this Christ 
can go forward through life : he is armed for defence ; he may 
grow great, and nothing can stay him. The disciple of Jesus 
has become the sovereign of the world, but in no material 
nor brutal way; for the spirit of his crucified Master is 
only violent in regard to justice, goodness, self-denial, self- 
sacrifice, and moral worth. By sowing these virtues as the seeds 
of life, he prepares and enriches the human soil, which thereby 
becomes capable of the highest cultivation and of the richest 
harvest. 

But as the reason of those who think seeks to understand 
elementary dogmas, asks an explanation of them so far as 
our imperfect and limited cognisance allows, demands that the 
attacks of hostile philosophy, science, and literature, be foiled ; 
so it desires to know in detail the human and divine life of 
Jesus, the words which he spoke, the law which he has formu¬ 
lated, his manner of teaching, preaching, striving, suffering, 
and dying. 

The history of Jesus is the foundation of the faith. The 
doctrines and theology of the Gospel, Christian ethics, the 


INTRODUCTION. lij 

worship, the hierarchy, and the order of the Church, all rest upon 
it Thanks to the unwearied labour of the learned, the doctrine 
of Jesus, his ethical system, his worship and his Church have 
gradually become the object of distinct, perfect, and organised 
sciences, answering to the legitimate aspirations of those 
believers who desire to be at once men of faith and men of 
science ; and so the life of Jesus Christ must be told according 
to the demands of history. The present work is an attempt 
to meet these deep needs. 

The partisans of what is now called the critical school say : 
The Christ of dogma and tradition, the Christ of the Apostles 
and of the Gospels, interpreted according to the doctrine of the 
Church, is not and cannot be the Christ of history. This 
ideal Christ, God and man, the Incarnate Word, miraculously 
conceived, calling himself the Only Son of God, in a meta¬ 
physical and absolute sense, abounding in miracles, speaking 
as the fourth Gospel makes him speak, rising again on the 
third day, ascending to heaven in the sight of his disciples 
after forty days, is not a real man. He only exists in the pious 
imagination of believers, and by that alone has he been created. 

The true Jesus, the Jesus of history, was born like all 
other men, lived like them, did no more miracles than they ; 
he has taught a purer morality, founded a religion less im¬ 
perfect than others; and as all reformers, as a rule, yield to 
the unyielding nature of their surroundings, he was the victim 
of Jewish hostility ; he died like us ; he did not rise again ; he 
does not live with God. 

Not only my Christian faith, but my impartiality as a man, 
revolts at this contradiction between dogma and history, laid 
down as a principle, and declared to be an axiom opposed to 
any life of Jesus as both God and man. Convinced that 
Jesus was the invisible God in a human form like ours, I as an 
historian, see him in his life, as now he is, in this double nature. 


IV 


INTRODUCTION. 


The question of his divinity has divided the noblest 
minds ever since his advent; it will divide them to the 
end; it is indeed strange that Jesus alone has raised a 
problem which never sleeps in the conscience of men, a 
problem which never fails to stir them. I will here draw 
the attention of unprejudiced men, and of all fair-minded 
critics, to this simple historical reflection. 

The violent controversy of which Jesus is the object was 
foretold in the prophecies. It will last as long as the world 
lasts ; it grieves, but does not surprise or trouble the Christian, 
for he sees in it a witness to his Master. It was found even 
in the life of Christ. When his disciples, in answer to his 
question, said: “ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God,” the Jews only said, “ He is a prophet” ; others, blinder 
still, declared that he was a blasphemer and a revolutionary. 

When he had left the earth, while the apostles preached 
him in the Jewish synagogues as the Messiah both God and 
man, full of the wisdom and the power of God, the earliest 
sectaries, Nazarenes and Ebionites, declared him to be merely 
man. 

The struggle on this point was prolonged through cen¬ 
turies ; a heathen philosopher, Celsus, without however deny¬ 
ing the miracles of Jesus, scoffed at his doctrine which he 
called absurd, and at his cross, which he considered infamous. 
Origen, in refutation, proclaimed the divinity of his Master. 

Since then the times have changed. The Crucified has 
become great, has destroyed heathenism, has absorbed 
philosophy, and dethroned the Empire, has conquered the 
earth, civilized the barbarians, and created a new world. Who 
then were right, the Jews who reviled Jesus and slew him ; 
the heathen, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and that honourable 
prefect of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, who disdained him 
and his disciples as a contemptible sect; philosophers like 


INTRODUCTION. 


V 


Celsus, overwhelming him with their foolish wisdom, or the 
apostles, who adored in Jesus the Son of God? 

If Jesus were in reality a mere man dishonoured by the 
Jews and by the heathen, how comes it that he has marked on 
the earth so deep a furrow, and founded a religion which domi¬ 
nates the world ? 

The work is inexplicable; it is the readiest proof that 
Jesus was indeed all that the Church affirms. 


I. 

The first element of a scientific history is that it should be 
set out by wise, clear-sighted, and impartial criticism. 

Criticism, however, must not be confounded with history; 
though they are inseparable, they must remain distinct. 

In its most general sense criticism is the exercise of 
judgment, a faculty essential to every reasonable being. To 
criticise and to judge are synonymous ; for judgment, like 
criticism, has for its object discrimination between the 
true and the false. It is the first of the rights, and the most 
necessary of the duties, of reason. Whatever be the domain 
explored by it: whether religion, philosophy, science, litera¬ 
ture, aesthetics, or even mathematics, the reason must be alert 
to discern the reality of phenomena, to recognize the truth, 
which is often deceptive, and the false, which is occasionally 
plausible. 

Criticism, therefore, cannot be a special science ; it is rather 
a condition of all science. It is a part, even, of that logic 
which fixes for men the rules of just thought and sound judg¬ 
ment. These simple considerations demonstrate the absurdity 
of those who consider they have a monopoly of criticism. 
The critical school is the school of all men; every one can, 


VI 


INTRODUCTION. 


and ought, to belong to it. The most ordinary temptation of 
the cultured mind is to criticise beyond measure, to desire 
to judge everything, even that of which it is ignorant. 
The wise man restrains this eager and intemperate desire; he 
learns to judge only what he knows, never forgetting that his 
knowledge is limited and his ignorance immeasurable. 

A man may be an excellent critic in philosophy and a very 
bad judge in religion or in history. Certain branches of human 
knowledge require not only a speculative mind, but a long 
experience. Moral doctrines will be better judged by an 
ignorant person who has practised virtue than by a sceptic 
who knows nothing of the austere joys of self-sacrifice. The 
saints who live by the words of Jesus will always understand 
them better than the Hellenizing interpreter who rejects them 
and does not know their savour. ; A delicate taster can perceive 
niceties which escape the analyst. 

When applied to history, criticism has a very definite func¬ 
tion. History has for its object the relation of facts ; now, past 
facts being only known to us by documents, and documents 
being edited by the more or less immediate witnesses of the 
facts themselves, criticism must examine, all together, facts, 
documents, and witnesses. 

Certain facts are absurd : criticism puts them on one side; 
certain documents are tampered with, or of doubtful authen¬ 
ticity : criticism points them out or rejects them ; if the 
witnesses are unworthy of credence, it tears off the mask and 
gives them the lie. 

In regard to the life of Jesus, preliminary criticism is 
required and privileged to examine the documents and the 
witnesses which give us information about this life; the 
antiquity and authenticity of the first, the testimonial value 
of the others ; it must examine the nature of the facts 
recorded in the documents, or related by witnesses. 


INTRODUCTION. 


vii 

These problems have for more than a hundred years raised 
so much controversy in Germany, Switzerland, England and 
France, that many volumes would scarcely suffice to record it. 
The refutation of erroneous solutions would of itself demand 
a volume. Here we can only trace the main lines and sum 
up, while we give the reason for, a few definite conclusions. 


II. 

The works which teach us, in detail, the acts and words 
of Jesus, his birth, his life and his death, his doctrine, his 
institutions, and his work, are not numerous: a few letters 
written by the Apostles, a few chapters in the Acts, and 
chiefly the four books known as the Canonical Gospels. In 
spite of their trifling bulk, these writings are inexhaustibly 
rich in the abundance of the acts and words that they record. 
Their first merit, as documents, is their antiquity. Edited in 
the years which immediately followed the events, they are the 
simple and truthful expression of the memories which the 
teaching, the precepts, the example, and the person of their 
vanished Master had left in the soul of the disciples. Two 
years and a half of perpetual intercourse with him had trans¬ 
formed them little by little. One of the essential works of 
Jesus, that which took precedence of all others, without which 
the others would have had no result, was to engrave his living 
and faithful image on the mind of his apostles. They had to . 
preach him to every creature, and in order to preach him it 
was necessary that they should know him; he only could 
teach them. 

He concealed nothing from them ; he treated them, 
according to his own expression, as friends. He laid himself 
bare to them ; they recognised in him the only Son of the 


INTRODUCTION. 


viii 

Father, and the Son of Man, born of a woman, they heard his 
words of wisdom and holiness, saw the Heaven open above his 
head, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the 
Son of Man ; they were the witnesses of his irresistible and 
divine power ; they understood the hidden reason of his 
sufferings, of his sorrows, of his voluntary weakness, of 
his unsuccess with the chosen nation and of his death; they 
saw also the glory of the Risen One, a glory of which the 
splendour veiled from the world was reserved for the disciples 
alone ; they were inwardly and visibly possessed by his spirit. 
Clothed with this superhuman force they felt themselves com¬ 
missioned by Christ, the invincible propagators of his faith, 
the continuers of his work ; and these Galilaeans, untaught, 
ignorant, and timid, laying aside all hesitation and all fear, 
fifty days after his death, in that very town where their Master 
had been crucified, set themselves to publish his name before 
the people who had demanded his execution, and the San¬ 
hedrin who had arranged it. They called him “the Holy One 
and the Just, the Author of life” ; they sorrowfully reproached 
their hearers that they had killed him ; they affirmed that 
God had raised him from the dead ; they called him “ the 
Messenger of the Lord, the Prophet foretold by Moses ” ; 
they declared that the miracles which they worked were 
accomplished by the power of Jesus of Nazareth, and in 
the boldness of their faith, they pointed him out as the stone 
which the builders rejected, become, in the hands of God, the 
head of the corner, and as the only Saviour given to men . 1 

Their words, their courage, their conviction, and their zeal 
were irresistible. Neither prohibition, nor threat, nor scourge, 
nor chains, nor death stopped them. They called themselves 
the witnesses of the resurrection ; and, making an appeal to 


Acts iii. 14; iv. ir. 


INTRODUCTION. 


IX 


the conscience of their enemies, they added that the Holy 
Ghost, which God has given to all those who obey him, bore 
witness also of the truth of their words . 1 

This apostolic preaching is the earliest gospel. It sprang 
from the soul of the immediate disciples of Jesus, at the 
bidding of the Holy Ghost; it is the word of God; human 
conscience did not invent it, for it is the echo of the words of 
Jesus. None can deny its antiquity or its authenticity. 

The historian, accustomed to call up past events, sees, by 
the aid of documents, the disciples of Jesus united in the 
memory and the worship of their Master. Their union was 
closer and more intimate, in proportion as they were more 
alone in more hostile surroundings. They were nothing by 
themselves and they had nothing; all their strength was in 
the power of God ; all their science was summed up in one 
being: Jesus Christ. All their wisdom was in him, and he 
was all their treasure ; all their destinies were limited by him ; 
and as all these things existed only by faith, faith was their 
all, and was without measure; their life was no longer their 
own, but belonged to Christ . 2 They felt themselves his very 
members, and they were convinced that no power, whether on 
earth or in heaven, could separate them from his love. No 
such psychological phenomenon has ever been seen. Whatever 
influence great minds may exert over those who are near them, 
they cannot assimilate them to themselves in so full a degree, 
they only fashion them from outside, and are incapable of 
infusing into them their own spirit, as a new, living and 
personal force. In this community the whole life of Jesus 
was lived over again. As those filled with a great love, the 
disciples recalled and revived their common memories, told 
over again the acts of their Master, repeated his teaching and 

1 Acts v. 30. 

2 Gal. ii. 20. 


X 


INTRODUCTION. 


communicated it to their pupils. The smallest detail of 
the pathetic last days of his career, his arrest, his judg¬ 
ment, and his cross, all those scenes so full of sorrow and 
of anguish, appeared over again to them ; never had they 
been more vividly conscious of Jesus. It is the property of 
separation and of death to concentrate the power of memory 
upon the absent. They are born again in us; and looking into 
the depths of our souls, we find them there, we see them and 
hear them. Jesus was truly in the midst of them ; they lived 
with him in prayer, 1 and in the practice of virtues which he 
had taught them by his word and his example. There we 
must seek the first origin of the oral Gospel, which constitutes 
the first preaching of the apostles and the source of the written 
Gospels. 

The apostles soon felt the need of recording the instruction 
of their Master and the history of his life. The first believers 
must have desired ardently to keep in their memory the good 
news which the ambassadors of Jesus preached to them ; and 
the ambassadors, leaving their new converts, the young com¬ 
munities organised by them, loved to leave them a witness 
more lasting than their words. The written Gospel arose to 
meet these needs. 


III. 

The exact duration of the time which elapsed between the 
earliest apostolic preaching and the appearance of the first 
written memoir cannot be ascertained; but that time must 
have been short. The universal tradition of the Church 
places the composition of the first Gospel between the years 
33 and 40 of the Christian era. 2 The author of this Gospel 

1 Acts i. 14. 

2 Euseb., Chronic. Bk. ii. Tiberius ; Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres. iii. 1. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XI 


was one of the apostles, Matthew the Publican. It was 
written in Hebrew characters for the Jews of Palestine and 
Jerusalem, 1 in the language which they then spoke, the 
Aramaic dialect, a mixture of Chaldaean and Syriac, which 
was the language of Jesus. 

The leading idea on which all the faith of the apostles was 
concentrated, was that Jesus was before all things the Messiah 
of Israel announced by the prophets. They endeavoured to 
persuade all the Jews of this ; their preaching was nothing 
else than the public witness to this truth, as is shown by the 
fragments of the discourses preserved in the Acts. 2 What 
Peter said, all his companions, animated by the same faith, 
said; and after Jesus had left them, they, obedient to his 
order, filled Jerusalem and all the synagogues of Palestine 
with the witness of their faith in his Messiahship. 

This idea inspired the first Gospel; it is the soul of it, and 
reduces to unity all its parts. It is easy to see this when we 
examine the prophetic passages which the author quotes, and 
of which his own narrative is only the commentary and the 
historic justification. 3 This book has naturally and neces¬ 
sarily the genealogy of Jesus as its heading, to establish his 
descent from David; for, in the eyes of every Jew, the most 
popular of the Messianic titles was that of Son of David. 

The great sermon on the mount befitted the legislator of 
the new time ; the numerous parables concerning the Kingdom 
reveal him who came to preach the Gospel to the poor; the 
anathemas against the Pharisees and the prophecy about the 


1 Jerome, Adv. Pelag.m. 2 ; Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres. iii. 1; Euseb., Hist. 
Eccles. iii. 24; Jerome, De Vir. illtistr.m. ; Fragm. Papias, ap. Euseb. 
iii. 39. 

2 Acts ii. 14; iv. 8 ; v. 29. 

3 Matt. i. 23; ii. 6, 15,18, 23; iii. 3 ; iv. 1 5 ; viii. 17 ; xi. 5, 10 j xii. 18 j xiii. 
35 ; xxi. 5, 16, 42 ; xxii. 44; xxvi. 31; xxvii. 9, 35, 43, 46. 


Xll 


INTRODUCTION. 


future of Jerusalem and the world point to the judge who has 
his fan in his hand, and is the master of men and of the ages. 

This marked characteristic of the book, independently of 
its apostolic origin and its priority over the other Gospels, 
explains the authority it obtained, and the extraordinary 
power it exercised in the conversion of the Jews. The 
great debate between the believers and the Jews was, whether 
Jesus was or was not the Messiah of the prophets. The 
Gospel of St. Matthew answered the question with triumphant 
evidence. 

All the Messianic titles pointed out by the prophets were 
verified in Jesus. The evangelist proved this by the life of 
the Master. His book is at once a living portrait of Jesus and 
a demonstration, or popular apology, of his Messiahship. 

The original idiom in which it was composed was scarcely 
understood beyond Palestine ; and yet the Messianic character 
of Jesus was of interest not only to the Jews of Jerusalem, of 
Judaea, of Idumaea and of Galilee, but to all those of the disper¬ 
sion. As these last spoke Greek, it was necessary to translate 
for them the Syro-Chaldaic Gospel. A great number of people, 
according to the fragments of Papias, 1 applied themselves to the 
task. A Greek translation by an unknown author, 2 followed 
the original Aramaic very closely. It gained weight either 
from the authority of the translator, or from its acceptance by 
the Church; and it soon took the place of the primitive text, 
which disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem, together 
with the group of Judaean Christians who used it. If a 
version of it remained in the hands of the Ebionites and 
the Nazarenes, it sustained alterations like all those others 
which the sects modified, interpolated, mutilated, and altered 
to suit their doctrines. 

1 Euseb., Hist. Eccles. iii. 39. 

2 Jerome, De Vir. illnstr. iii. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xiii 

Some years afterwards, when the apostles had finished their 
task in Judaea and had borne witness to their Master in the 
city, and had dispersed to carry the good news abroad, one of 
Peter’s disciples, his interpreter, as Papias 1 calls him, or his 
secretary, according to the expression of St. Jerome, 2 accom¬ 
panied the chief of the apostles in his missions. His name was 
Mark, and he seems to be the John Mark of the Acts. 3 

He was among the followers of Peter, towards the year 
42, when Peter, persecuted by Herod Agrippa, had to flee 
from Jerusalem. He came to Rome itself to preach the 
Gospel, and his preaching obtained there an extraordinary 
success. The brethren wished to have a written memorial of 
the apostle’s words, and, at their request, Mark wrote his 
Gospel. The apostle approved of the work which, invested 
with his authority, was read thenceforward by all the Church, 
as St. Clement declares. 4 5 The ancient world is unanimous 
about these facts. 6 

On a general comparison between the first and second 
Gospels, the most remarkable difference between them is in 
the brevity of St. Mark. The whole Jewish element of St. 
Matthew, all that part of the history of Jesus which was 
addressed to the Jews as a proof that he was the Messiah of 
Israel, has disappeared : his descent from David, the facts of 
his childhood, the sermon on the mount, in which the new law 
of the Messiah was opposed to the imperfections of the ancient 
law and traditions, as well as to the erroneous doctrines of the 
rabbis, the numerous parables about the Kingdom of God, 

1 Euseb., Hist. Eccles. iii. 39, 

2 Epist. cxx., qu. 11. 

8 Acts xii. 25. 

4 Jerome, De Vir. illustr ., viii. 

5 Cf. Papias, ap. Euseb., Hist . Eccles. iii. 39; Clem Alex., ap Euseb. ii. 

15, vi. 14; Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres ., iii. 1; Epiphanius, Haeres.> li.. No. 6. 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


are gone. It is plain that the writer is addressing those 
who were ignorant of Jewish customs. 1 He narrates the 
public life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. These consider¬ 
able abbreviations have given the name of an abridgment 
to this Gospel, and St. Mark has been termed a condenser. 2 

We must not however lay such stress on this expression 
as to disguise the real originality of the second Gospel. It 
was evidently compiled from the first; and except for the 
omissions, just mentioned, the resemblance in the choice and 
the order of facts is undoubted. St. Mark must have had 
the Aramaic Gospel of St. Matthew before his eyes, and he 
used it to compose his own in the Greek language; but his 
originality appears in his statement of the facts. An atten¬ 
tive examination shows that he had other sources of informa¬ 
tion, and that he had heard the words of his master, the apostle 
Peter. From this source above all he must have drawn the 
new details which he introduces, the more complete knowledge 
of names and places, indeed, all that is characteristic in his 
book. 

The Gospel of St. Mark has not, like that of St. Matthew, 
any apologetic tendency. It was neither conceived nor 
arranged to demonstrate the Messiahship of Jesus. It is only 
the popular narrative of his public life in Galilee, of the tragic 
end of that life, and his triumphant resurrection at Jerusalem. 

It is however the Gospel of the Son of God, and it proves 
implicitly the divinity of Jesus. It contains also, in its historic 
form, the apostolic message, such as Peter and all his colleagues 
delivered it when they preached to the heathen population of 
the Empire the name of the Saviour, the only one who, under 


1 Cf. Mark vii. 1-4. 

2 Cf. Jerome, De Vir. illiistr viii. ; August. De Cons. Evang . i. 3; 
Euseb., Hist. Eccles. ii. 15. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XV 


heaven, has been given to man. 1 Facts play a larger part 
than discourses ; the power of Jesus, whom all things obeyed, 
is more accentuated than his teaching. However, his suffering, 
his condemnation by the Jews, the shame of his passion and 
of his cross, are not concealed. The apostles did not blush for 
their Master; they knew that the blood shed on Calvary was 
the destined means to regenerate man and glorify God in 
Christ. 

We shall have a false and inadequate idea of the burning 
zeal of the Christians in the first years of the Church, if we 
forget the eagerness with which they sought to know the life 
of him to whom they had given their faith, and whom they 
adored as the Messiah, the Saviour, the Son of God. 

Inflamed by the preaching of the apostles, they were 
inspired by every word and act of Jesus. Many among the 
disciples and their followers endeavoured to place on record 
what they had heard from the mouth of witnesses. The Aramaic 
Gospel of St. Matthew seems to have been specially the 
object of these efforts; 2 it was interpreted and translated, 
attempts were made to introduce into it new details, and to 
place the facts in an order more in accordance with the reality 
of history. The fruits of this literary activity have not come 
down to our time; all the books, to which one of the Gospels 
alludes, 3 have disappeared like so many imperfect works un¬ 
worthy of attention, and which, doubtless, had no power of 
survival apart from the surroundings wherein they were born. 


When a real and legitimate want is felt among a body of 
men, a more vigorous mind is almost always found to answer it. 

1 Acts iv. 12. 

2 Cf. Fragm. Papias, ap. Euseb., Hist. Eccles. iii. 3Q. 

3 Luke i. I. 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION. 


The infant Church demanded a document which should 
give it a more complete picture of the history of Christ. A 
Gentile of Antioch, perhaps a Jew, converted by the Apostle 
Paul, one not without learning, and who seems to have taught 
medicine at Antioch itself, undertook to answer to this need 
among the early believers. Hence the new Gospel which was 
added to those of the apostle Matthew, and of Mark, the 
disciple of Peter. St. Paul praises this work in one of his 
epistles. 1 It was spread through all the Churches, and brought 
to light a great number of facts and discourses which had not 
been given in the earlier writings. 

St. Luke fills up their gaps. A third of his narrative 
belongs to him alone, notably five miracles and twelve 
parables. 2 His main care was to gain information from 
witnesses who had seen everything from the beginning, and 
were established as ministers of the Word. A disciple of 
Paul, a companion of his travels, 3 a colleague of Barnabas, 
one of the seventy, he came to Jerusalem 4 and interrogated 
the apostles Peter, James the Less, who was called the 
brother of the Lord, and John, the Beloved Disciple. He 
certainly knew the family of Jesus and his mother, and the 
relatives of John the Baptist. He had seen the various 
writings to which he alludes in the preface to his work, and 
probably the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark. Indeed, it 
is unlikely that such documents, invested with the authority 
of the apostles, and, therefore, venerated by all the faithful, 
should not have been in his hands. He evidently supple¬ 
mented them by his accounts of the birth of John and the 


1 II. Cor. viii. 18. 

2 Luke i.; ii. ; vii. 11-18, 36-50; x. 1, 25-42; xii.-xvi.; xviii. 1-14 ; 
xix. 1-28; xxiii. 6-12 ; xxiv. 12-53. 

3 II. Cor. viii. 18. 

Acts xx. 


INTRODUCTION XVli 

infancy of Jesus, borrowed, no doubt, from a more ancient 
source, as is evident from their Hebrew style. 

He supplements them again by those many episodes with 
which the wandering life of Jesus was enriched, during a 
period of four or five months, from the day on which he 
quitted Galilee, having nowhere to lay his head, until his 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. 

The first two Gospels are silent on this important period. 
He gives them yet greater fulness by his narrative of the 
Resurrection, and by that of the Ascension, with which the 
Book of the Acts opens. 

But the originality of St. Luke’s work is in the chronolo¬ 
gical order which he attempts to establish between the facts, 
and above all in the spirit which regulates his choice of facts. 

The chronological order, however imperfect, yet allows us 
to fix the date of the birth of Jesus, under Herod, and the 
beginning of his Galilaean ministry, in the fifteenth year of 
Tiberius, which were impossible had we St. Matthew alone. 
We can best characterise the spirit which animates him by 
calling it the very spirit of Paul. 

At the time when Luke wrote, a new thing had happened 
in the infant Church. The Gospel, rejected by the Jews, 
found great favour among the Gentiles. The people flocked 
with enthusiasm to hear the preachers, and above all to him 
who called himself the Apostle of the Gentiles. Beside the 
mistrustful Jew, stiff-necked, and ready to persecute, was seen 
the docile and impressionable Gentile. The prophecy of Jesus 
was visibly accomplished ; the kingdom was taken from the 
chosen people and given to the people abandoned of God. 
The evangelist was a witness to this new fact, and, following in 
the steps of his master Paul, he laboured for the conversion of 
the Gentiles. In the bosom of the Church dissensions arose, 

3 


INTRODUCTION. 


xviii 

the converted Jews did not always look with a kindly eye on 
their Gentile brethren; they prided themselves on their title 
of Children of Abraham, and could hardly rid themselves of a 
secret contempt for the uncircumcised. They would fain have 
brought them under the yoke of the law, but the Gentiles 
resisted. The Law was ended ; the kingdom of Jesus had 
broken the ancient bonds. St. Paul defended the liberty of the 
children of God, free henceforward from all legal tutorship 
from that imperfect worship which he called the elements of 
the world. 1 The life of the Master was full of events by which 
this new state of things was foretold and justified ; and it was 
necessary to produce them. 

The living Spirit which watched over the apostles inspired 
St. Luke, as it had inspired St. Paul; and we find Christ 
in the third Gospel, the universal Saviour, as the heathen 
were to see him, as Paul preached him, and as he showed 
himself in his public life. St. Luke carefully gathered a large 
number of incidents, omitted by the first Gospel, which, 
while they humiliated the Jews, might give confidence to the 
Gentiles : the salvation promised to Zacchaeus the publican 
and to the penitent thief, the pardon given to the woman who 
was a sinner and to the prodigal son, the preference given to 
the publican over the Pharisee ; he praises the Samaritan, that 
charitable outcast, in opposition to the Priest and the Levite, 
who had no bowels of mercy; he extols many Gentiles, he 
shows us Jesus praying for his executioners, converting the 
penitent thief and the Roman centurion. 

St. Luke has thus described the most touching scenes of 
the life of Jesus, whom he delights, after the example of his 
master Paul, to call “ the Lord.” If Mark is the evangelist of 
power, Luke is the evangelist of mercy and goodness. The 


1 Gal. iv. 3. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XIX 


ancients, with their love for symbolism, gave to Mark the lion 
as his emblem, and to Luke, the victim, the ox whose blood 
is shed. In each page of his work we recognise One who 
saves and pardons, this Son of Man who came not to destroy 
but to save, not to judge but to forgive. 

The work must have been composed before the Acts, 
which are its continuation ; and as these stop at the end 
of the second sojourn of St. Paul at Rome, we must place 
the production of the Gospel before the year 64. 

The persecution of the Christians by Nero obliged Luke to 
flee from the capital of the Empire where Paul died ; and the 
Gospel which he had written was carried by him into Achaia 
and Boeotia, where he sought refuge. 1 

Towards the middle of the first century, when the spirit 
which animated the Church had enlarged it and stirred up the 
apostles to the conquest of the Empire, beyond the provinces 
of Asia Minor and of Greece, the nascent faith encountered 
there not only the hostility of the Jews, but it came into 
collision with Pagan doctrine and the Jewish cabbala, 
that medley of opinions which constituted the wisdom 
of civilisation at that time. This obstacle was more 
dangerous than persecutions: these attacked the body 
only, while human philosophy was able to corrupt the 
faith and the words of Jesus. Among the converts from 
Paganism, many were imbued with this false wisdom. All 
ages and civilisations are alike; man can never escape from 
the influences of his surroundings, he accepts its doctrines 
as he accepts its ethics, without disputing them, and most 
frequently without understanding them. 

The doctrines which then composed the intellectual at¬ 
mosphere, whether religious or moral, took a little later the 
1 Jerome, De Vir. illustr. c. vii. 


XX 


INTRODUCTION. 


name of Gnosticism, a confused mixture of Monism, 
Pantheism, and Dualism, of Fate and Magic, and strange 
Asceticism ; a mixture of speculations on the origin of things 
and on the universe. 

Two currents prevailed: one starting from an ascetic 
Monism which appealed to the Unitarian doctrine of the 
Jews; the other inspired by an obstinate Dualism. 

Those who followed the first conceived of God as a trans¬ 
cendent and abstract unity, devoid of any relation to the 
world, and in himself unknowable. 

The universe was produced by intermediary forces, im¬ 
personal, emanating from the silent and unknown principle. 
One of these forces, or .Fons, as they were called, was the 
Logos or superior Christ, who was united, for a time, to Jesus. 
Redemption, according to them, was nothing but this: Jesus 
had preached the Truth or the unknown God, he had conquered 
the cosmic forces, the rulers of this world who paralysed the 
striving of the soul or the spiritual being towards the primi¬ 
tive Being. Man was not ransomed by faith in Jesus or by 
the merits of the divine Redeemer, but by the Gnosis, or the 
knowledge of God, of the spirits or Fons, of humanity and 
its relations. It was enough for man to be initiated into the 
Gnosis: and this initiation made of him a spiritual being. 

According to the Dualists, who revived the doctrine of the 
Persians, the world is under the influence of two opposing 
forces, sprung from the depths of Being: light and darkness. 
The material world issued from darkness, and is in itself evil; 
but the light will triumph and finally will deliver the vaporous 
particles now captive in the body. Jesus, according to these 
heretics, was truly the Christ, the Son of God in person, but 
they denied that he was truly incarnate. 1 It is easy to imagine 


Ignat., Ad Smyrn. ii. Cf. II. Tim. ii 8-17. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXI 


what dangers the word of the apostles would run in pre¬ 
sence of minds who, rather than receive them as children, 
according to the commands of Jesus, thought only how to 
interpret them according to their own opinions. St. Paul, the 
founder of almost all the Churches of Asia Minor, had pro¬ 
phesied this danger and warned the heads of the communities 1 
against these false prophets who attempted to corrupt the 
faith. Even in his lifetime he saw them at their work ; 2 
he pointed out their perversity and denounced their lying 
wisdom. 3 

This peril is that of all ages of culture. The great diffi¬ 
culty for man is that he should submit himself simply to the 
Gospel; and his greatest temptation, to desire to transform it 
as he pleases according to his own systems. 

The Gnostics denied the divinity of Christ, by reducing 
him to the part of an JEon or force inferior to God. They 
misunderstood the essential and true relation which binds 
Jesus to his Father, they were scandalised at his humanity 
which places him in contact with matter, the evil principle, 
as they accounted it; and they reduced it to a mere appear¬ 
ance. They refused to the Son of God and to him who claimed 
for himself that title, a true personality. The converted Jews, 
known as Judaisers, shared some of these errors, which, by 
destroying Christ, at the same time ruined his work. The 
Ebionites and the Docetae were in league together, the one 
sect denying the true humanity, the other the divinity, of 
Jesus, and menacing Christianity in its cradle. One of these 
heretics was Cerinthus; Irenaeus has preserved for us the 


1 Acts xx. 28-31. 

2 I. Tim. i. 5-7. 

s Id. i. 19; vi. 20,21. 


XXII 


INTRODUCTION. 


main lines of his doctrine, 1 which was precisely that of the 
Ebionites ; he saw in Jesus only a man, into whom, at the 
moment of baptism, a demiurge or JEon, called Christ, de¬ 
scended. Another of these false teachers was Nicolas the 
Deacon, whose loose morality was allied to the wildest specu¬ 
lations on the nature of God, on creation and the relation 
between God and the Universe. 2 

To combat these errors the apostle John, the beloved 
disciple, wrote a fourth Gospel. 3 All the heads of the churches 
of Asia, and the apostle Andrew as their leader, begged him 
to do so. 4 

There was none so able as he to bear witness to the truth. 
He did not oppose a human doctrine, or a philosophic system, 
to human doctrines and vain systems of philosophy. He was 
not a philosopher; he was a witness, who knew nothing but 
the word of his Master, and he only repeated what he heard. 
While St. Paul, in his Epistles, argues about and discusses the 
Gospel facts, the doctrine of Christ, the work of redemption, 
his death and his resurrection, St. John, gathering up his 
recollections, inspired by the Spirit by whom he was illu¬ 
minated and who suggested to him, as Jesus promised to the 
faithful, all that he had to say, St. John bears witness; all 
that he narrates has one sole end, to establish the faith in 
Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and source of life eternal. 

The object was no more to demonstrate by history as St. 
Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke had done, that Jesus is the 
true Messiah promised to the Jews, and the Saviour of every 
man by repentance and faith ; but to ascertain the true divine 
nature of “ him who came in the flesh.” 

1 Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres., I. xxvi. i. 

2 August., De Haeres. in ftnnc. v. 

3 Iren. Adv. Haeres., III. i. i; Clem. Alex., ap. Euseb ..Hist. Eccles. vi. 
14; Tertull., Cnitra Mar cion. iv. 2. 

4 Canon de Muratori ; Jerome, De Vir. illusir. ix. 


INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

The fourth Gospel consists entirely of the answer to the 
questions : What is the Son of God ? What are his relations to 
the divine Being he called his Father? What did he come to 
accomplish in the world ? What was the salvation whereof he 
is the author? It is not John who speaks, it is Jesus himself, 
for he alone could teach us about his true divine nature. The 
phrase with which the evangelist opens his Gospel, which is 
the summary of all that he is about to say, is the Word, the 
Verbum, the Logos. “In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things were made by 
him; and without him was not any thing made that was 
made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness com¬ 
prehended it not.” 1 

Jesus himself never used this expression, which declares 
his divine nature, in the discourses which St. John himself 
records. There is nothing in common between it and the voos 
of the Greeks, the Logos of Plato and of Philo of Alexan¬ 
dria ; it records rather the “ Word ” of the prophets, and the 
Wisdom personified of the Proverbs and the Books of Wisdom. 
Perhaps Jesus revealed it to his apostles, when he opened 
their minds to understand th£ Scriptures. 2 No other word 
better declared what he is ; it implies his eternal origin in the 
bosom of the Father, where the “ Logos ” is always living, his 
distinction from the Father from whom he emanates, in the 
equality of the same life, and the relation of God to the world 
created by the “ Logos,” led by the “ Logos ” through all time,, 
and saved by the “ Logos ” made flesh. The whole theodicy 
is founded on this idea, and the use of the divine word which 


1 John i. i. 

2 Luke xxiv. 45. 


XXIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


expresses it is enough to cause St John to be styled the 
Theologian and the Theosophist. 

The evangelists, each in his own manner, answer the 
question: How the Word, the only begotten Son of the 
Father, is revealed in his human life ? The first three teach 
us by the narrative of his teaching and his acts. He taught, 
they say, as an absolute Master ; he forgave sins, like God ; he 
ruled over nature, by his own power, as one who has no 
superior. The fourth Gospel teaches us by direct discourses 
in which Jesus himself declared his pre-existence, his eternal 
origin, his community of essence with the Father, his power 
to enlighten, to create, to save, to give life, and to judge, as 
the Father. 

And in order to make it clear that these discourses are 
no artificial compositions, they have been set in precise facts, 
limited as to time and place, with particular care and definite 
intention. The most transcendent of revelations is thus pre¬ 
sented to us in a sensible and popular form, which permits us 
to read divine truth in those striking images wherein Jesus was 
pleased to manifest it. 1 

The facts recorded by the evangelist are all, with two 
exceptions, the multiplication of bread in the desert of 
Bethsaida and the walking of Jesus on the waves, taken 
from those periods in the life of Jesus omitted by the 
earlier evangelists. The miracle of Cana shows the power 
of Jesus to transform substances, equal to the power which 
created them. The healing of the son of the officer at 
Capernaum from a distance, proves that the word of Jesus is 
mighty and distance does not alter its power. The multipli¬ 
cation of bread shows his creative power ; his walking on the 
waters and calming the storm, his absolute authority over 


Cf. ch. iv. ; vi. ; ix. ; x. ; xi. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXV 


nature; the healing of the man sick of the palsy at Bethesda 
declares that the most inveterate disease cannot resist him ; 
the man born blind attests that he is the origin of light, and 
the resurrection of Lazarus proves him the master of death 
and life. 

His discourses, as John records them, by fragments, are 
but the expression of his divine nature, of his inner life, of his 
relation to the Father, of his absolute equality with him, in 
essence, in power, and in energy. No doubt he holds all from 
the Father; but this origin, while it establishes his distinction 
of person from the Father, does not detract from his absolute 
equality, because the Father has given all things to him from 
eternity, when he begat him as his only Son. And in reveal¬ 
ing these inward mysteries, we may remark that Jesus puts 
forth no doctrine, he simply attests the interior facts of which 
he has the full consciousness, transcendent facts, since they 
constitute the very life of God. 1 

He gives, in a word, the deepest revelation of his work, 
which consists in communicating to all those who believe, the 
Spirit of his Father and of himself. This idea may be traced 
in all the parables recorded by the evangelist. The living 
water of which he spoke to the woman of Samaria, the 
mysterious Breath mentioned in his conversation with 
Nicodemus, the Stream springing from the rock, the Light 
which enlightens the world, the Shepherd who leads the sheep 
into the pastures, all these symbols express the mysterious 
and divine spirit of Jesus, the power by which his work is 
accomplished in the secret place of souls and in humanity. 

In all these marvellous discourses there is no abstract 
metaphysics. Jesus, as St. John reveals him, is no more a 
philosopher than is the Jesus of the three first Gospels. He 


1 John v.; x. 


XXVI 


INTRODUCTION. 


did not come to declare the truth by argument, nor to 
put forth a religious system. His word is the full, living, and 
adequate expression of that which is; the moral law is his 
will and his spirit; God, for him, is the living Being, loving 
and all-powerful, the Father; he translates him into human 
speech, not the interior conception which is the result of 
a systematic view, but the reality of which he has an 
mmediate perception. 

The earlier Gospels narrate what was seen in Jesus, the 
fourth what was not seen. But as the visible has always its 
invisible cause, the facts of the synoptics have their hidden 
cause in the invisible God who is in Jesus and whom St. John 
reveals. Those show us God living among men, in their 
likeness, the other speaks to us of what he is in himself, in the 
bosom of the Father. 

The first Gospels show us the man in Jesus, the fourth 
reveals the God. All, even the profane, can read the first, the 
other is reserved for the initiated whom the eternal Light 
illuminates. Genius, left to its poor human light, cannot 
comprehend it, but simple souls can understand it, in spite 
of its sublimity; and whoever opens it should remember the 
saying of the Master, “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they 
shall see God.” 

The authenticity of the most divine of the Gospels was 
never denied among the ancients. One single obscure sect, 
the Alogiae, repudiated it, but called no witness, and only 
advanced dogmatic reasons. Those who denied the Word 
could not accept the Gospel of the Word. 

Almost all the apostolic Fathers quote from it, and these 
have been carefully collected by Dr. Funk . 1 

No objection can be taken to the witness of Irenaeus, a 

1 Opera Patr. Apostol i., p. 565, &c. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXV11 


disciple of Polycarp, himself a disciple of St. John, when he 
attested the existence of this work by John. 1 

It was written in Greek, at Patmos, according to some, at 
Ephesus, according to others. Tradition is uncertain on this 
point, as it is on the exact time at which it was written. It is 
probable that the apostle wrote it in his old age, when, being 
the only survivor of the direct witnesses to the life and 
doctrines of Jesus, he was implored by all the bishops of the 
churches of Asia Minor to lift up his voice and confound the 
denials by which the nature of Jesus was beginning to be 
assailed, which continued to multiply for six centuries, and 
were always overcome by the testimony of the fourth Gospel. 

It is not possible to make the silence of Papias an 
argument against the fourth Gospel. A new fragment of the 
bishop of Hieropolis, quoted by Thomasius (Book i., p. 344), 
which I borrow from Dr. Aberle, 2 is a witness that he knew 
the apostle’s work. 

Moreover, the genuineness of the four canonical Gospels is 
a question now settled for ever. It is proved by the fragment 
of the canon of Muratori, that under the pontificate of Pius I., 
in 142, there were four Gospels, that the Roman Church recog¬ 
nised no others, that she read them in the same order in 
which they are now classed, that she considered them as 
inspired by God, written by one and the same spirit 

It is proved, by a learned and detailed comparison, that all 
the Gospels may be reconstructed, bit by bit, but entirely, by 
the aid of quotations gathered out of the works of the 
Fathers of the first and third centuries, from the author of 
the Epistle of Barnabas to Tertullian and Irenaeus. 

It is proved that not only in the middle of the second 


1 Iren., Adv. Haeres ., III. i- I. 

3 Einleitung in das Neue Test., p. 112. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xxviii 

century, in 150, there already existed a Latin version of the 
Gospels, the old Italic version, but that before it there 
were already two, one made in Africa, the other in Italy. It 
is proved, thanks to the discoveries of Dr. Cureton, that, 
before the old Italic version, there existed one in Syriac, 
called the Peschito; and that the translator of the Italic had 
a Greek translation under his view, carrying on its margin 
Syriac variants to which he especially referred. It is thus 
proved that the translations were contemporaneous with the 
original. 

It is proved, moreover, by the discovery of the Codex 
Sinaiticus by Tischendorf, that at the very time when, 
according to Tertullian, the autograph MS. of the Gospels 
was still preserved in the apostolic churches, there was a 
contemporaneous copy. This copy is the Codex Sinaiticus, 
anterior to the MS. corrections officially required by 
Constantine. 

We have therefore the right to conclude that the Gospels 
existed from the first century, and that they existed as we 
now have them. If we have not the original autograph MSS., 
we have at least contemporary translations. Criticism is 
satisfied. There is complete harmony on this essential point 
between it and the tradition of the Church. 


IV. 

The first characteristic of these documents is that they 
are, before all, evidence in the strictest sense of the word. 
They do not discuss, they do not set forth ideas or theories; 
they explain nothing, they tell facts, they record and affirm 
words. Hence they are thoroughly impersonal; the author 


INTRODUCTION. 


xxix 


disappears before his subject. If he is at times visible, as for 
example in the Prologue of the third Gospel, or in the fourth, 
with an extreme reserve, it is to declare that he is only a 
witness, that he has been instructed in all things, and that he 
has seen or heard what he has written. 

We cannot discover any expression of interior feelings 
which the writers experienced in painting the life of their 
Master. There is no enthusiasm, no cry of admiration, no 
private reflections. They give their recollections ; that is all; 
and they write them as the Spirit suggests them, or as other 
witnesses enable them to make them more definite. 

Certain events have struck some more than others; the 
narrative goes more into details, and is more vivid, more fresh 
in colour. The circumstances in which each of them has 
written, were among the determining causes of the selection 
and choice of many facts and words which they might have 
seen or heard in the life of their Master. The circle of readers 
to which they addressed themselves contributed not a little to 
modify their work. They could not speak to Jews who denied 
that Jesus was the Messiah as to Gentiles without Jewish 
prejudices, to simple men without learning as to those converts 
who were nursed in the Jewish or Greek Gnosis, to churches 
where the Jews sought to blend gospel liberty with legal ser¬ 
vitude as to churches free from these irritating questions. He 
who was admitted, from the beginning, to intimacy with the 
Master, who had received into his loving soul the deepest 
confidences of Jesus, who more than others had been struck 
by those conversations wherein he revealed his divine nature, 
his eternal filiation, the profound mysteries of faith and salva¬ 
tion by the Spirit, would evidently blend with his testimony 
a sweetness, a tenderness, a charm, a quickness of memory 
beyond any other. But all these differences are lost in a 
higher unity. 


xxx 


INTRODUCTION. 


Everything is from Jesus in the work of each evangelist 
It is he and he alone whose life we see, he alone whom we 
hear. The sermon on the mount, the parables, the discussions 
with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the instructions to the 
twelve apostles and the seventy disciples, the denunciation of 
false teachers, the prediction of the ruin of the Temple and of 
Jerusalem, the repeated prophecies of his future passion and 
death, his conversations with the woman of Samaria and 
Nicodemus, his solemn declarations that he was Messiah, 
before the great men of Jerusalem, in Solomon’s Porch, his 
extraordinary declarations of his divine nature, of his equality 
with the Father, of his function as Messiah symbolised by the 
rock of Horeb, by the lamps of the Feast of Tabernacles, by 
all the grand facts of Jewish history, and by the worship which 
recalled the facts, are all the words of Jesus. To declare that 
the evangelists, and notably the fourth evangelist, put their 
own words into their Master’s mouth and made him speak, as 
Livy made the Roman generals speak, is to take away the 
only title which they all formally claim, is to misunderstand 
the infinite respect which they had for their Master, is to over¬ 
whelm and contradict, without any positive motive, universal 
and unbroken tradition, and is to declare him a liar who said 
with the most solemn earnestness: “ That which was from the 
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our 
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, 
of the Word of life ; for the life was manifested, and we have 
seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, 
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us ; that 
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.” 1 

Thus is explained how ignorant men like the fishermen of 
Galilee, could write a book like the Gospels : they only had to 


I. John i. 1-3. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXXI 


remember. If they had composed a dialogue like Plato, or a 
treatise like Philo of Alexandria, we should have believed in 
their ability, and thought that ability suspicious; they would 
have put their own ideas and their own invention into the 
work; but they knew nothing. What we see in them above 
all, is, that under the constant action of Jesus, they gradually 
put off the popular prejudices of their race, and accepted with 
entire faith the example and the words of their Master. 
Themselves existed no longer, it was really their Master who 
was in them. 

In many cases I prefer, as a critic, a simple peasant to a 
subtle and cautious man of learning. The first will tell me 
plainly what he has seen ; the other Wants to give me an 
explanation. What interests the historian is, first the fact, 
and afterwards the explanation of the fact. In every 
hypothesis, before explaining phenomena, we need their 
verification, and here I mistrust the over-cultivated man, who 
always looks to his own system. Such a man thinks himself in 
possession of a perfect instrument; but he deceives himself. 
It is an admirable instrument for seeing what he wants, and 
for rejecting what does not suit him. 

The evidential character of the Gospels rests not only on the 
express intention of the authors, solemnly formulated by them, 
but also and mainly on the will of their Master. “ Go,” said 
he to them, when he left them, “ and teach all nations, teach¬ 
ing them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world.” 1 “Ye are witnesses of these things. 2 Ye shall re¬ 
ceive the power of the Holy Ghost which will come upon you, 
and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in 

1 Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 

3 Luke xxiv. 48. 


XXX11 


INTRODUCTION. 


all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the 
earth.” 1 

Their word was not to be a simple human memory, 
committed to chance recollection and uncertain conscious¬ 
ness ; it was to be guarded and sanctioned by the power of 
the Spirit of Jesus living in them, suggesting to them at that 
same hour what they should speak. 2 The unbroken tradition 
of the Church has always so regarded the evangelists. 

It follows from this that it is not possible to distinguish in 
their work one element peculiar to the writers, and any other 
peculiar to him of whom they wrote. All which fell from 
their pen belongs to Jesus, whether as an act of his life, or as 
a teaching of his doctrine. The act is more or less sharply 
and vividly described, the teaching is reproduced more or less 
completely, or in fragments, but both are integral parts of the 
life and doctrine of the Master. This is the secret of the 
beauty, simplicity, sanctity, and immortal power of the 
Gospels ; not that the soul and spirit and genius of the writers 
have passed into them, but the soul, the spirit, and the genius 
of their hero. He lives in them, acts, speaks, moves, enlightens 
and sanctifies. His sweetness shines in them and wraps them 
round, his attraction charms and draws them, his example 
carries them away; his goodness ever communicates itself to 
them. We seem to follow in his train, among the poor who 
surrounded him, with the sinner and the sick whose open 
sores and hidden wounds he healed; we may listen to his 
lessons as he gave them to the crowd, may sit with them to 
hear him, on the summit of the hills of Galilee or on the shore 
of its lake, may be with him on his journeys, and join the 
faithful in recognising him as the Son of God. None has 

1 Acts 1. 8. 

2 John xiv. 16 


INTRODUCTION. XXXlii 

ever spoken with such power, and spread abroad so many 
blessings. His intimate confidences to ms disciples, his fare¬ 
wells, his last conversations on the eve of his death, seem 
addressed to us ; his sufferings are seen by us in their terrible 
extent; his cruel death makes us weep, as it did his friends at 
the foot of the cross. His marvellous triumph reassures us ; 
and when we see him leave the earth in his glorious Ascen¬ 
sion, we feel ourselves full of hope and power, for he has left 
to us, as to his faithful disciples, the spirit which has con¬ 
quered the world and which makes us the children of God. 

These documents have in them a life, a youth, an eternal 
freshness, and are like the Christ to whom they bear witness. 
He was yesterday, he is to-day, he will be to-morrow. 
Heaven and earth will pass away; his being, his word, will 
never pass. All who are able to read the Gospels, will find in 
them consolation ; those who love can meditate on them, and 
they will learn sacrifice ; those who will what is good may ask 
of them, and they will find there the secret of all virtue. The 
despairing will see therein salvation, and all who think, if they 
examine them with an upright and simple heart, will be con¬ 
quered by that divine wisdom which instructs us in the mystery 
of God, showing us the sorrows of man and the means of 
comfort. No other knowledge is worth living for. 

There are, in history, two sorts of documents: the one a 
dead letter, the other alive; the first are truly the ruins of 
peoples, of societies, of civilisations, of vanished races, as stones 
and carven pillars, parchments or rolls of papyrus written with 
hieroglyphics or characters in an unknown tongue, no longer 
living ; they have become the property of every man, and they 
have no longer the living spirit of a people to interpret them; 
the second remains the property of a nation, a society, a living 
religion. It is written in a tongue which we speak and hear; it 
4 


XXXIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


is kept intact by those who live by it and who know its 
value 

All the Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician and the like docu¬ 
ments are in the first category. The Gospels occupy the front 
rank in the second. No book more deserves to be called a 
living book. 

What they record is the very life of millions of consciences 
who think as they, rule themselves according to them, are 
consoled by them, and hope in them. They arose in a 
religious society which justly regards them as its own posses¬ 
sion, as its family documents, and one of its most precious 
treasures. That society which, under the name of the Church, 
covers the whole world, presents its Gospel to all: but she 
alone can interpret it. She is its author, since it sprang from 
her, and surely whoever has thought out a book knows best 
the meaning of that book. 

Were it necessary to prove this simple and yet misunder¬ 
stood truth, I would say to those who forget it, to all the 
commentators in fact who take no account of the Church and 
her traditional doctrine, in order to arrive at the sense of the 
Gospels: When you attempt to interpret dead documents 
what method do you follow ? You endeavour to reconstitute 
the people to whom they belonged, you call them up in some 
degree, you give life to their ashes, and when you see them 
living before you, with their language, their manners, their 
doctrines, and all their history, you venture to read the docu¬ 
ment, and you interpret it with hesitation, for the historic 
resurrection of a lost civilisation and a vanished people is ever 
imperfect. But the Gospel documents are not dead, they 
belong to a people very much alive, and still growing, 
speaking, and teaching, never ceasing to interpret them 
read them, and make them live again. 

What right have you to treat them like some papyrus 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXXV 


discovered in the tomb of a mummy, or like an old parch¬ 
ment forgotten in the archives of a ruined town ? 

If the Egyptians of Rameses returned to the banks of the 
Nile, they would, I suppose, be the best interpreters of their 
writings : Egyptologists would be the first to recognise 
this. As a sound critic, and without invoking for the 
Catholic Church the infallible authority which she holds from 
her Master for the preservation and interpretation of the 
faith, I demand that she be treated as is every living and 
intelligent society, and that it be admitted that she, better than 
anyone else, is able to explain her own books. 

If this right be recognised, I make no difficulty in 
applying to documents, still living, in spite of their great 
antiquity, the method which consists in replacing these books 
in the surroundings wherein they were produced, and in 
borrowing from the knowledge of those surroundings elements 
of great value for their better understanding. 

For instance: In the Gospel authors there is a signifi¬ 
cant expression of which the interpretation is of the 
first importance, the expression “Son of God” applied 
to Jesus. Modern critics who study the Gospels as they 
study Herodotus or Livy, say truly that the phrase has 
different senses, and that it is sometimes taken in a meta¬ 
phorical and moral sense, in which it may be and is applied 
to men. They declare moreover that in this sense it is to 
be applied to Jesus. 

The question is, how Jesus intended it to be applied to 
him, and in what manner the apostles applied it. This is a 
question of fact and of testimony. The Church, as guardian 
of the apostolic tradition, repeating with them and after them, 
from age to age, what they taught, affirms that the title of Son 
of God has always been, since St. Peter gave it for the first 
time, until our own day, a title implying no metaphorical 


XXXVI 


INTRODUCTION. 


and moral sonship, but an absolute sonship, in the identity of 
the same divine nature. 

Criticism can prove nothing in opposition to such a testi¬ 
mony. No doubt reason is free to refuse faith in the word of 
the Church, as in that of the apostles and of Jesus ; but I do 
not understand how it can say to the authors of the books 
themselves or, what is the same thing, to the faithful guardians 
of those works: You do not know what you write about and 
what you read. In fact, reason knows nothing whatever 
about it. 

Understood in the Catholic sense, the expression may 
appear narrow or shocking to some minds; but if Jesus 
accepted it in the Catholic sense, the historian has only 
to declare this fact, and he is false to history if he refuses to 
do so. 

V. 

Another characteristic of the Gospel documents is their 
number, variety, and indissoluble harmony. 

Their number is necessary to the value of the testimony, 
to guarantee and to confirm it. Four witnesses have greater 
weight than one, when their word, in spite of individual 
differences, remains unanimous. 

Variety is not of less importance; and necessarily exists 
where there is number. Four witnesses telling the same 
thing in exactly identical terms would be confounded in one. 
The validity of the testimony demands depositions which are 
fundamentally accordant, yet diverse in detail. The Gospel 
narratives, compared with each other, present this character¬ 
istic. The history of Jesus, entirely composed of these inter¬ 
mingled narratives, will prove it to the reader; I cannot do 
better than refer him to the work itself. I must, however, 
premise that I have examined, with the most scrupulous 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXXVll 


attention, the contradictions which certain critics have de¬ 
clared that they see in the manifold narrative of the four 
evangelists ; but have never been able to discover them. I have 
indeed always avoided recognising one fact alone when the 
details proved to me that there were two, and in this manner 
many contradictions vanish. I will quote, as an example, the 
question of the blind men at Jericho. I admit two miracles, 
one at the entrance into the town, the other on leaving it; 
but I will ask the commentators who have desired to see only 
one, on what motive they base their opinion. If, according to 
St. Luke, a certain blind man was healed when Jesus arrived 
there, his testimony ought not to be rejected ; and if, accord¬ 
ing to St. Matthew and St. Mark, two others, of whom one 
was Bartimaeus, were healed when Jesus went away, their 
narrative should also be accepted. The tradition was confused, 
they answer; hence the confusion of the narrators; but they 
can know nothing about it, and cannot establish their point. 

I will mention further the two genealogies of Jesus, that of 
St. Matthew (i. 1-16) and that of St. Luke (iii. 23-28). It is said 
that they contradict each other; if the first be true the second 
is not so, and again, if the second be authentic, the first cannot 
be so. 

This argument could not be assailed did it not rest on an 
erroneous hypothesis. Both genealogies may be true. It 
is quite natural that they should be different, that one 
should give the ancestors of Jesus through Heli, of whom 
Joseph was the legal heir : as St. Luke does ; and that the 
other should enumerate the ancestors of Joseph through 
Jacob, according to his natural relationship : as St. Matthew 
does. This is called an evasion ; but I have an equal and 
better right to consider it as history. 1 

1 see Appendix B : The Two Genealogies of Jesus. 


xxxviii INTRODUCTION. 

An essential condition for understanding the harmony 
of the four Gospel documents, is that we form an exact idea 
of the part played by their writers. They did not declare 
that they said everything, when they reported a fact or a 
discourse; they noted some details, some fragments, and 
that is enough for history. 

What one saw in profile the other saw in full face ; such a 
fact appeared striking to one, another to another. From the 
liberty left to the narrators resulted omissions more or less 
voluntary, pictures more or less complete ; it would be a 
mistake, in comparing them, to argue from the omission of 
a detail to the falseness of the detail in a narrative which 
contained it. The true part of impartial criticism, when 
comparing documents, is to supplement one by the other. 

The obvious differences between the four evangelists have 
many and precise causes, which I will not enumerate ; they 
may be all explained on a little reflection by the personality 
of the author, the end at which he aimed, the readers whom 
he had immediately in view, and the definite historical cir¬ 
cumstances of his surroundings. These circumstances often 
placed in relief many acts and words of Jesus, which always 
remained for them a model at which to look, and a doctrinal 
rule to follow. 

Thus when the strife between the Judaisers and the con¬ 
verted Gentiles rent the early Churches, it is evident that the 
word of the Master when he prophesied the conversion of the 
Gentiles, and the touching scenes in which he praised their 
faith when he met with it, would be a living recollection in 
the minds of the disciples. These circumstances determine 
the end of the writers, who, while giving their testimony to 
what Jesus had done and taught, confirmed the faith and cut 
short all dispute. The circle of readers was in some measure 
determined by the end, as the end was determined by the 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXXIX 


circumstances ; and the living Spirit of their Master who was 
gone gave to the evangelists the necessary power to discern what 
they ought to say, or to put out of sight what must be still 
kept secret. Everything in them was subordinate to that 
inner spirit which assisted them, better no doubt than 
national genius inspires those who tell the history of their 
country. Whatever was their work, whether meditation and 
recollection, whether they enquired from various witnesses 
about the life of the Master, whether they consulted earlier 
writings, the Spirit was there to guard them against inat¬ 
tention and fraud, and to ensure the full truth of their 
testimony. 


VI. 

The indissoluble harmony between the four Gospels has 
been always recognised, in spite of their differences, from 
very remote antiquity. It is the universal tradition in the 
Church. Every one of these books containing the very word 
of God, it was impossible to admit disagreement between 
them. The word of God cannot contradict itself. Thus, from 
the middle of the second century, concordances, “ diatessaron,” 
as each was called, were published to reduce the four 
inspired narratives to harmony. This d priori unity is justi¬ 
fied by critical study, and by an attentive comparison of the 
documents. Not only the three first or synoptic Gospels, so 
called on account of the manifest likeness of their plan, agree 
together, but they are in harmony with the fourth, in spite of 
profound apparent divergences. 

The first examination of this last work shows, indeed, that 
in nothing does it recall its three predecessors. The facts, the 
geographical and chronological setting, the discourses, are all 
different. Certain critics have been quick to suppose these 


xl 


INTRODUCTION. 


differences amounted to a contradiction, and they formulated 
this dilemma: If the synoptics are correct in the way in 
which they retrace the life of Jesus, St. John has given us 
a fantastic history; if the discourses recorded by the three 
first Gospels are the true discourses of Jesus, those of St. 
John are an artificial composition; and conversely, if the 
fourth Gospel is truthful in its narrative and discourses, the 
three first cannot be so. 

The real and evident differences which we must admit 
between the synoptic Gospels and the fourth, do not only not 
authorise us to argue that there is a contradiction, but they 
show on the contrary the indissoluble harmony of the four 
documents. St. John does not contradict his predecessors, he 
completes and explains them, from the geographical and 
chronological setting of the life of the Master, of the facts 
which form the groundwork of this life, and the discourses 
which sum up his teaching. 

The three first Gospels have given Galilee and Jerusalem 
as the sole theatre of the ministry of Jesus; the narrative 
of St. John proves that before he preached the Kingdom 
of God in Galilee, Jesus, during a whole year, preached 
in Judaea and revealed himself solemnly in the city by 
driving the traders from the Temple. The synoptics speak 
expressly only of the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem for 
the Feast at which he was to die; St. John mentions all his 
different journeys to the Holy City, his retreat into Peraea, 
beyond Jordan, and to Ephraim, on the borders of the desert. 
The synoptics do not begin the narrative of his public life 
until the imprisonment of John the Baptist; the fourth Gospel 
makes it begin with the baptism of Jesus, and fixes its total 
duration by the three Passovers which he mentions. 1 The 


1 John ii. ij3 : ; vi. 4; xii. 1; xiii. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xli 


synoptics give us no starting-point for the chronological 
classification of the facts of his public life; St. John marks 
them with extreme precision by the various journeys of Jesus 
to Jerusalem, 1 at the great Jewish feasts. The synoptics, not 
having enumerated the various sojourns of their Master in the 
city, could not tell us what he did there, nor the solemn 
teaching which he gave; but St. John narrates them with 
great fulness and detail. 

It is plain that all this precious account by no means con¬ 
tradicts the synoptics, it fills up their gaps, and has, moreover, 
the merit of explaining their narrative. It is impossible 
without them to reconstruct the touching drama of the life 
of Jesus, and to understand his special method of preaching 
and teaching. His main contentions, his most sublime teach¬ 
ing, needed for their theatre the Jewish metropolis, and for their 
witnesses the national authorities. There the career of the 
Messiah had to end, there he had to show himself in splendour 
as a king. Galilee, for Jesus, was a relatively peaceful spot, 
where, far from that centre of hatred which threatened him 
from his earliest days, he was able to preach the Kingdom of 
God to fishermen and the poor, to gather his disciples, and 
fix the basis of his work in those faithful minds destined to 
spread it abroad. But if he retired to Galilee, as the synoptics 
tell us, 2 John alone gives the historic motive of this retreat. 3 

According to the first three Gospels it is plain that Jesus, 
as a Miracle-worker, Master and Teacher, acts and speaks 
with absolute personal authority. When he heals the sick, 

1 John v. i; vii. 2; x. 22. The synoptics, however, contain certain 
allusions to the different journeys of Jesus to Jerusalem; but our only 
definite information is from the fourth Gospel. (Matt, xxiii. 37; Luke 
ix. 51, xiii. 22.) 

2 Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14 ; Luke iv. 14. 

8 John iv. 3. 


xlii 


INTRODUCTION. 


commands the evil spirits, or raises the dead, we do not see 
him appeal to a superior principle whence he takes his power; 
he speaks, lays his hands, gives his orders; and the sick are 
healed, the demons flee, the dead rise. When he teaches it is 
just the same: he forgives sin, as God; he promulgates a 
moral law in his own name, as God. He demands that his 
disciples recognise in him the true Son of the living God . 
and praises them for having reached so supreme and com¬ 
plete a faith. We ask, then, what such a Being may be, what 
is his nature, what is his true relation with him whom he calls 
his Father, what is his work upon the conscience, who is the 
Messianic personage foretold by the prophets and realised in 
him, what is the secret of the Kingdom founded by him ? 

The three first Gospels only record those words of Jesus 
wherein all things were spoken in parables and in signs ; it 
was reserved for the fourth Gospel to give us the full light, by 
recording the most solemn and intimate discourses wherein 
Jesus put forth those unspeakable mysteries in a tongue 
which no creature could speak. 

Jesus is not a Son of God, he is the Son; the name he 
constantly gives himself. He is one with the Father, 1 of 
the same essence ; before Abraham was, 2 before the world 
was, he was, and he was in the Father. 3 He has received 
all from the Father: power, light, and life; he is the judge, 
the enlightener, the life-giver; he communicates his Spirit, 
and with his Spirit, life eternal. He is the express, the only 
and perfect, manifestation of the Father; whoso sees him, 
sees the Father; who loves him, loves the Father; he is in 
the Father, as the Father is in him. 4 


1 John x. 30. 

2 John viii. 58. 

3 John xvii. 5. 

* John xiv. ro. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xliii 


These transcendent revelations to the conscience and 
intellect of every man can only be accepted by him who has 
faith in the words of Jesus. They transport us into a divine 
sphere, inaccessible to genius, but open to the simple soul and 
the upright heart. 

Not only do such discourses not contradict the moral 
teaching of Jesus and his parables, but they give them their 
sole explanation. 

If Jesus spoke as St. John makes him speak, I understand 
the Miracle-worker and the Teacher of the Synoptics, the 
absolute sovereignty with which he acts, and the authority 
with which he formulates his law. So the Son of God, the 
only and the true, without metaphor and without reserve, 
must give his orders and his laws ; if not, the Jesus of the 
Synoptics becomes an inscrutable enigma, and we ask how a 
simple ambassador of God dared to assume a mode of being, 
acting, and speaking, which belongs to God alone. 

The unity of the documents is complete. They can 
only be opposed one to the other by interpretations 
which do violence to history. Those who start from the 
hypothesis that Jesus was only a man, are evidently obliged 
to sacrifice the whole of the fourth Gospel, facts as well as 
discourses; we cannot admit the one and repudiate the 
others, they form an indivisible whole. The writer who 
attests the facts guarantees the discourses by his testimony; 
his work is one and entire, it holds together in all its parts 
and is in union with the work of the first three Gospels. It 
is impossible to write a life of Jesus according to any 
historical and critical rules apart from the teaching of John. 
The first condition for writing the history of a great teacher 
is to show the idea which such an one has of himself; 
now the principal object of St. John is to reveal to us this 
idea in Jesus. The historian has not to ask if a given 


xliv 


INTRODUCTION. 


revelation is in conflict with his own ideas and philosophy; 
his part is more important and more disinterested : he owes it 
to us to declare fully the testimony of those who have seen 
and heard. 

The first and the great mistake of modern criticism, 
whether Protestant or infidel, in the vast and dogged labour 
which it has given to the Gospel documents, since the eighteenth 
century, in France, in England, in Switzerland, and above all in 
Germany, is that it treats these documents as a dead letter. 
It has deliberately forgotten that these are not books which 
have become general property, but they are the inalienable 
possession of the Catholic Church. Even if, to these critics, the 
Church is not a divine institution, which has received from its 
founder the infallible guardianship of his words, written or 
spoken, it should not misconceive its high value as an organised 
society. Moreover, criticism has no authority to judge our 
sacred books as a mere papyrus of the old Egyptians, which has 
outlived the people who traced thereon the symbols of their 
thought. 

The constant witness of a religion like that of Jesus, 
with an unbroken tradition of eighteen hundred years, leaving 
on each century the strong impression of its faith, in numberless 
works, eminent by the doctrine they put forth, by the virtues 
which they teach, and by the genius which has conceived 
them, cannot be lightly put aside, and is a powerful force. 
And as this tradition is the living interpreter of the Gospels, 
a sound and impartial criticism must have recourse to it, in 
order to understand them, to know their true origin, and their 
intention. 

Every book, considered apart from the society to which it 
belongs, and of which it is a constituent principle, is at the 
mercy of the first comer. The Gospels, torn from the religious 
tradition of which they are the most ancient and the most 
sacred monument, have been the prey of all the critics. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xlv 


In order to make them speak, they must be reanimated; 
for the soul of a document is in the surroundings which have 
inspired it, in the ideas which have dominated these surround¬ 
ings, in the passions which agitated it, in the manners which 
it describes. The modern critics have endeavoured to recon¬ 
stitute these surroundings artificially, and, as might be expected, 
they have borrowed them from the Church, from the writings 
of her doctors, and from the very works which they had before 
them and tried to understand. The school of Tubingen is 
particularly famous in these delicate researches, but it has been 
led astray by Baur, 1 whose chief hypothesis has been proved 
arbitrary and exaggerated. To see in the primitive Christianity 
of the first and second centuries nothing but the antagonism of 
Judaising Christians, which is represented by Peter, James, and 
John; and an universal Christianity, represented by Paul,is to 
contract the horizon at pleasure, to give to a detail the value of 
the whole, and to take an exaggerated feature as the measure of 
a complete physiognomy. All the apostolic writings, and the 
Gospels in the first rank, having been interpreted from this 
narrow and exclusive point of view, it is easy to guess what 
they have become in the hands of the critic and his school. 

But this hostile labour has not availed to solve the problem 
committed to these documents; it has not explained the method 
of their formation, nor found the secret of their resemblance and 
their diversity; it has not explained the intimate union which 
brings them together as members of the same body; it has 
not discovered the precise order of their origin. 

It is sufficient to review the numerous works written on 
this subject, in order to show the radical weakness of those 
who have invented those various problems, in which every kind 
of hypothesis has been maintained. Some have supposed an 

1 Vorlesungen iiber Neu. Test. Theologie. 


xlvi 


INTRODUCTION. 


earlier Gospel as the source from which the first three evan 
gelists derived their materials. 1 Herder opposed this view; 
our Gospels, according to him, took their origin from an oral 
Gospel. Wandering teachers, a body of trained reciters, 
went about preaching the Gospel; their stories, learnt by 
heart, embellished and enriched, were the source of our 
written Gospels. There has also been a theory that small 
tracts, 2 edited by anonymous persons, historical fragments of 
the life of Jesus, have served above all to compose the Gospel 
of St. Luke. 

It has been asserted that the Gospel of St. Matthew was, 
rearranged; that there was a primitive Matthew which had 
disappeared, but had served for the composition of the first 
Gospel as we now have it, and of the second, attributed to St. 
Mark. Some, however, have given the precedence to St. Mark 
and considered him to be the source of St. Matthew and 
St. Luke. 3 

These undefined hypotheses which have succeeded one 
another show their weakness, for as each comes it destroys its 
predecessors, and no one of them has been able to endure for 
many years; they have been forgotten with their inventors. 
When an independent criticism shall have brought about some 
agreement among its authorised representatives, it will be 
time to examine its conclusions. Till then, the witness of 
the Church in regard to the Gospels and their authors may 
despise these contradictory voices, which scarcely penetrate 
beyond the walls of a school or the narrow limits of a 
party. 

It is no less serious a fault of interpretation to misconstrue 
the evidential character of the Gospels. Instead of seeing in 

1 Eichhorn, Einleitung in d. N. Test. 

2 Schleiermacher, Kriiische Versuch iiber die Schriften des Lukas. 

3 Reuss, Histoire Evangilique i. 189. 


INTRODUCTION. 


xlvii 


them only a narrative of facts attested by well-instructed 
and honest witnesses, an attempt has been made to 
distinguish in their works the substance from the form; the 
most moderate have accepted the one and set aside the other, 
not considering that perhaps while they attack the form they 
destroy the substance. Thus the first chapters of the third 
Gospel have been, according to them, a charming poem 
whose beauty has struck them with admiration; but all these 
fresh and lively details were only a poetic veil to manifest 
the saintliness of John the Baptist and to embellish the con¬ 
ception and birth of Jesus. They have thus been able to 
dispose of Christ’s miraculous conception. 1 

The whole of the Gospel of John, in like manner, has 
been held to be a work of theology and not of history, which 
had as its end the dogmatic explanation, in its transcendent 
theories, of the doctrine of the author concerning the divine 
nature of Jesus. 2 This interpretation, which has a semblance 
of truth and moderation, is the ruin of the authority of 
the Gospels, and is moreover in formal opposition to the 
authors of these documents. Two of them declare that they 
are only historians who relate faithfully what they have them¬ 
selves heard and seen, or what they have learned from the 
mouth of immediate witnesses. Far from suspecting their good 
faith and attributing to them a vulgar lie, we ought to accept 
them at their own valuation. Since the eighteenth century no 
criticism which respects itself has dared to treat the evangelists 
as impostors; even by minimising the epithet, and by re¬ 
ducing the imposition to a literary artifice, in Oriental mode. 
We may deny that they had worldly knowledge and academic 
culture, but we may not question their honesty and sincerity. 

1 Reuss, Histoire Evang'elique i. 203. 

2 Reuss, Theologie Johanniquc i. 214. 


xlviii 


INTRODUCTION. 


All these authors gave their lives to uphold what they 
declared to be the truth. Of all the proofs of good faith none 
is more sacred, none more triumphant among men. A simple 
affirmation may be doubted; one sealed by martyrdom, and 
by the blood of witnesses, demands the confidence of the 
most sceptical enquirer. 


VII. 

Historical criticism must not only examine the written 
sources and their authors, the testimony and the witnesses, it 
must weigh the contents of books and documents, the facts 
and the doctrines recorded therein. The facts of the life 
of Jesus, the religious doctrine which he has inculcated on 
his disciples, and by their means on the conscience of men 
are the facts and doctrines recorded in the four Gospels and 
the substance of the deposition of each witness. Now all the 
facts, I do not say some facts, I say all the important facts 
without exception, from the birth of Jesus up to his departure 
from the world, are miraculous facts. All his doctrine 
relative to his person and nature, his moral teaching as well 
as the solemn declarations by which he revealed his work 
and his relations with the Father who sent him, and man 
whom he came to save, transcends reason; and is essentially 
prophetic, for it sets forth truths superior to the experience 
and the reasonings of men. It can only be accepted by faith ; 
its credibility can only be attested by miracles, and the effects 
which it produces in the soul of a believer. 

The Gospels are an unbroken web of prophecies and of 
miracles, which we may not seek to minimise, but must 
accept absolutely and directly. I am not ignorant of the 
violent revolt against miracles, against all that is transcendental 
and unseen ; nor of the distrust of witnesses who record these 


INTRODUCTION. 


xlix 


things. This revolt and obstinate distrust form one of the 
traits of modern unbelief. Its causes are many and profound ; 
they would demand a long and searching analysis, which does 
not enter into the design of this Introduction. I will remark 
only that the great progress of experimental science, and its 
marvellous applications, have not been without influence on 
the intellectual and psychological condition of this generation. 

The exclusive pursuit of the exact and natural sciences 
has subdued mind to matter ; we have asked from material 
forces the explanation of everything; by degrees we have 
come to hold as nothing all that is beyond matter ; and if, in 
order to satisfy the want of an indestructible unity in superior 
intelligence, we have sought for the universal principle which 
rules nature and man ; instead of looking above nature and 
man, we have sought it blindly in one or the other. Hence 
have sprung Positivism, Materialism, and Pantheism ; which 
have more or less weight with a great number of minds among 
♦ those who teach ; and their secret alliance unconsciously 
impresses the crowd. These three systems form a sort of 
diffused atmosphere in which the bulk of men in our age 
and country moves and breathes. 

The man who would speak of miracle and prophecy to 
a generation bowed under the yoke of such an opinion, can 
hardly gain a hearing. If I do not hesitate to do so with the 
force of mature conviction and with full faith, neither do I 
hesitate to submit the miracles and the prophecies of the life 
of Jesus to the examination and the proof of criticism ; but 
there is criticism and criticism, just as there are different 
weights and measures. What, then, is that true and sure criti¬ 
cism, at once the safeguard to the legitimate independence of the 
historian, to the truth of the facts which he examines, to the 
antiquity of documents and the respect due to the witnesses ? 

There are three elements in the human spirit : first 
5 


1 


INTRODUCTION. 


principles, systems, and beliefs. Principles cannot be dis¬ 
cussed ; they may be all reduced to the principle of 
contradiction or identity, causality, or efficient cause. In 
virtue of these axioms, all absurdities, all contradictions, and 
effects without cause, can exist only in the imagination. First 
principles are judged of none, they judge all systems and 
all beliefs, they are the measure of all truth. 

Systems are composed of co-ordinate propositions, by the 
aid of which certain cultivated minds attempt to explain the 
origin of things. The mass of men cannot construct them ; 
and can only accept them passively with a more or less blind 
confidence; they often determine individual beliefs and the 
opinion of an age ; but faith and the first principles of reason 
are within the reach of all. 

Criticism then can be founded only on three bases : primary 
truths, or the systems and the faith of each man. If it 
invokes a faith as its measure, it has value only with those who 
accept the belief; if it invokes a particular system, it has 
authority only over the partisans of this system. If, on the 
contrary, it appeals to essential truths and the unchangeable 
principles of reason, it bears sway over all, for reason thus 
understood sways every intelligent being. 

Whoso judges facts and the documents in which they are 
recorded, according to the spirit of his time and its prevalent 
opinion, is exposed to error; for ages change their spirit and 
opinion varies. Whoso judges them according to his personal 
system and his little philosophy will be equally deceived, for 
no philosophy, however wide it boasts itself, is the measure of 
all things, nor can it contain all that is. 

We must have a reason larger and more certain : now the 
only one which presents itself, entirely guaranteed from this 
double point of view, is reason in its fundamental axioms, 
which are invariable, eternal, and absolute. I call upon 


INTRODUCTION. 


li 


criticism to judge by this light all the facts of the Gospel 
and all the miracles, and I confidently await its verdict. 

This criticism belongs neither to one age nor to one 
school; but being universal and necessary, it sways all 
systems and all times. It has been practised by all men who 
have respected their own reason, and have not committed 
suicide by scepticism. No one can deny it, unless he 
renounce his own intelligent and reasonable nature; on it 
depend faiths and religions, systems of philosophy and 
positive science, books and documents. 

The Christian religion, the theology and the sacred books of 
the Church of Jesus do not avoid it or fear it, rather they appeal 
to it; and I do not hesitate to say that they only, amid all 
beliefs, religions, systems, and documents, are capable of stand¬ 
ing against it. Neither the religions of Buddha, of Zoroaster, 
nor of Mahomet, nor the books on which these three religions 
depend ; neither Pantheism, nor Materialism, nor Positivism^ 
can resist the criticism of reason brought back to its first 
principles of causality and contradiction. Its inexorable 
judgment will leave nothing standing but the monotheism of 
the Jews, the theology of Christians, and the sacred docu¬ 
ments of the Old and New Testaments. Just in proportion as 
the modern man, disabused of the vain systems in vogue, no 
longer demands of them the measure of what he should hold 
as truth, he will no longer consult Kant, Spinoza, Hegel, 
Voltaire, or other casual teachers; he will fall back on first 
principles, and on the unassailable truths which form their 
eternal basis, and he will do justice to him who came to 
teach the origin and end of life, the holy law to which he 
must conform, the power to obey it, in fact, all that enlightens 
and consoles, charms and comforts him. 

The armed spirit of true criticism is the vigilant and 
incorruptible guardian of the frontiers of history; it turns 


lii 


INTRODUCTION. 


back pitilessly those who wish to introduce into it, as real factSj 
the caprices and dreams of their fancy; it proscribes and 
unmasks the obstructionists who desire to mutilate the 
domain of reality, by suppressing real facts, because they do 
not bear the trade mark of their system or the stamp of their 
house. History is a territory which is still disputed ; we must 
not permit usurpers to confiscate or settle on it. Certain men 
have wished to convert it into a fief reserved for Atheism, 
Pantheism, and Materialism; the duty of criticism is to drive 
them back. History should belong only to pure reason; it 
demands a large and liberal spirit, at once disinterested and 
honest. 

Now criticism, in the name of pure reason, must demand: 
whether the supernatural facts of the Gospel, the origin and 
the birth of Jesus, his education and visible growth, his human 
and divine nature, his vocation, the acts of his public life 
and their interdependence, his works, teaching, laws, and 
miracles, his strifes, his way of living and acting, his death and 
resurrection, are all historic realities which must be truthfully 
narrated and described. We have not first to ask how these 
things can have happened, whether they can be measured by 
our minds, whether they are more or less in conformity with 
our prejudices and our culture; we have to ask if they are. 
When they are once established, the mind can endeavour to 
understand them, to explain them, to show their greatness 
and their credibility; it has not the right to minimize or deny, 
to mutilate or travesty them. The honest historian will not 
trouble himself about the caprices of reason ; he will write down 
with entire conscientiousness what he has ascertained; he 
does not ask if a fact is miraculous or not, whether natural or 
supernatural : he describes it as he sees it. All that we have 
a right to ask of him is that he should be a conscientious, 
an honest, and a truthful witness ; and he must accept 


INTRODUCTION. 


liii 


only the statements of conscientious, honest, and truth¬ 
ful witnesses. He must bear himself at an equal distance 
from that credulity which accepts everything even ab¬ 
surdity and fables ; and from that proud distrust which 
refuses testimony as soon as it comes into conflict with his 
system, his science, and with that culture, which he wrongly 
defines as reason The prejudiced man is unfit to write 
history, for he is bound to write it falsely 

VIII. 

As regards the reality of prophecy, I will draw the 
attention of the reader to this marvellous fact which will serve 
as a prevenient justification of the prophetic discourses of Jesus 
which are reproduced in their entirety in this work. The 
Christ is more than prophet; he is the great, the only one of 
whom prophecy was spoken. Before he was born his history 
was written. 

As we turn over the Old Testament, whose antiquity and 
integrity no critic will question, all may read as follows:— 

“ And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham and 
said . . . And IN THY SEED shall all the nations of the 

earth be blessed.”— Gen. xxii. 15-18. 

A prophet, Balaam, son of Beor, said : “ There shall come 
A STAR out of Jacob, and A SCEPTRE shall rise out of Israel.”— 
Numbers xxiv. 15-17. 

The dying Jacob said : “ The sceptre shall not depart from 
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, TILL HE COME 
THAT IS TO BE SENT ; and he shall be the expectation of 
nations ”— Gen. xlix. 10. 

“ And there shall come forth A ROD out of the stem of Jesse> 
and A BRANCH shall grow out of his roots: and the spirit oi 
the Lord shall rest upon him. ... In that day there 


liv 


INTRODUCTION. 


shall be A ROOT OF Jesse which shall stand for an ensign 
of the people ; to it shall the Gentiles seek.” — Isaiah xi. 1, 2, IO- 

“ Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour 
down RIGHTEOUSNESS : let the earth open, and let them bring 
forth SALVATION, and let RIGHTEOUSNESS spring up together.” 
— Isaiah xlv. 8. 

“ Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign ; Behold, 
a virgin shall conceive, and bear A SON, and shall call his name 
Immanuel.” — Isaiah vii. 14. 

“But thou,Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou belittle among 
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth 
unto me THAT IS TO BE RULER IN ISRAEL.” — Micah V. 2. 

“ For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given : and 
the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall 
be called WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD 
THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE.”— 
Isaiah ix. 6. 

“ The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway 
for OUR God.” — Isaiah xl. 3. 

“ Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, THY SAVIOUR 
cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work 
before him.”— Isaiah lxii. 11. 

“ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the Lord 
hath anointed me”— Isaiah lxi. 1. 

“ He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish 
the throne of his kingdom for ever. I WILL BE HIS FATHER, 
AND HE SHALL BE MY SON.”— II. Sam. vii. 13, 14 

“ The Lord hath said unto me. Thou ART MY SON ; THIS 
DAY HAVE I BEGOTTEN THEE.” — Ps. ii. 7. 

“ He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and 
the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my first¬ 
born, higher than the kings of the earth.”— Ps. lxxxix. 26, 27. 


INTRODUCTION. 


lv 


“ 1 CAME OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE MOST HIGH.”— 
Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 3. 

“ Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear 
not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God 
with a recompence; he will come and save you. Then the 
eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf 
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, 
and the tongue of the dumb sing.”— Isaiah xxxv. 4, 5, 6. 

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God 
will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his 
people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord 
hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this IS 
OUR God ; we have waited for him, and he will save us: 
this is THE Lord ; we have waited for him, we will be glad 
and rejoice in his salvation.”— Isaiah xxv. 8, 9. 

“He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath 
given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. 
Afterward did he shew himself upon earth, and conversed 
with men.”— Baruch iii. 36, 37. 

“ The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet 
from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, LIKE UNTO ME ; unto 
him ye shall hearken. . . . And I will put my words in his 

mouth ; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall com¬ 
mand him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will 
not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, 
I will require it of him.” — Deut. xviii., 15, 18, 19. 

“ Therefore my people shall know my name : therefore they 
shall know in that day that I AM HE THAT DOTH SPEAK : 
behold, it is I. How beautiful upon the mountains are the 
feet of him THAT BRINGETH GOOD TIDINGS, THAT PUB- 
LISHETH PEACE; that bringeth good tidings of good, that 
publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth !” 
—Isaiah lii. 6, 7. 


lvi 


INTRODUCTION. 


“ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a 
new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of 
Judah : not according to the covenant that I made with their 
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring 
them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they 
brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord : 
but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house 
of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in 
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and will be their 
God, and they shall be my people.”— Jeremiah Kyi*. i. 31, 32, 33. 

“ And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new 
spirit within you ; and I will take the stony heart out of 
their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh : that they 
may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do 
them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” 
—Ezekiel xi. 19, 20. 

“ And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out 
my spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters 
shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young 
men shall see visions.”— Joel ii. 28. 

“ I will open my mouth in A PARABLE : I will utter DARK 
SAYINGS of old.”— Psalm lxxviii. 2 . 

“ I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, 
saith the Lord God. I will seek that which was lost, and bring 
again that which was driven away, and will bind up that 
which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: 
but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them 
with judgment.”— Ezekiel Kyyiv. 15, 16. 

“ Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect, in whom 
my soul delighteth ; I have put my spirit upon him : he shall 
bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor 
lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A 
bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he 


INTRODUCTION. 


lvii 


not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He 
shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in 
the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.”— Isaiah xlii. 1-4. 

“ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; shout, O daughter of 
Jerusalem : behold, THY ICING cometh unto thee: he is just, 
and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and 
upon a colt the foal of an ass.”— Zech. ix. 9. 

“ This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will 
rejoice and be glad in it. Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord: 
O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he 
that cometh in the name of the Lord.”— Ps. cxviii. 24-26. 

“ He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and 
acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from 
him ; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”— Isaiah 
liii. 3. 

“Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of 
Israel, the Saviour.”— Isaiah xlv. 15. 

“ I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien 
unto my mother’s children. For the zeal of thine house hath 
eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee 
are fallen upon me.”— Ps. lxix. 8, 9. 

“ Therefore let us lie in wait for the RIGHTEOUS : because 
he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our doings: 
he upbraideth us with our offending the Law, and objecteth to 
our infamy the transgressings of our education. He pro- 
fesseth to have the knowledge of God : and he calleth himself 
the SON OF THE Lord. He was made to reprove our 
thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to behold : for his life 
is not like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion. We 
are esteemed of him as counterfeits: he abstaineth from our 
ways as from filthiness: he pronounceth the end of the just 
to be blessed, and maketh his boast that God is his father.”— 
Wisdom ii. 12-16. 


lviii 


INTRODUCTION. 


“ The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take 
counsel together, against the Lord, and against HIS ANOINTED.’ 
— Ps. ii. 2. 

“Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which 
did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”— 
Ps. xli. 9. 

“ Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heavi¬ 
ness : and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; 
and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also 
gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to 
drink.”— Ps. lxix. 20, 21. 

“ I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise; because of the 
voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked : 
for they cast iniquity upon me, and in wrath they hate me. 
My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death 
are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon 
me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.”— Ps. lv. 2-5. 

“ For mine enemies speak against me ; and they that lay 
wait for my soul take counsel together, saying, God hath 
forsaken him: persecute and take him ; for there is none to 
deliver him.” — Ps. lxxi. 10, 11. 

“If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. 
So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the 
Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter : a goodly price 
that I was prised at of them.”— Zech. xi. 12 13. 

“ Awake, O sword, against MY SHEPHERD, and against 
the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts : 
smite THE SHEPHERD, and the sheep shall be scattered.”— 
Zech. xiii. 7. 

“ Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies : for 
false witnesses are risen up against me and such as breathe 
out cruelty.”— Ps. xxvii. 12. 

“ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened 


INTRODUCTION. 


Iix 


not his mouth : he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as 
a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his 
mouth.”— Isaiah liii. 7. 

“ I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them 
that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and 
spitting.”— Isaiah 1 . 6. 

“ Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that 
we may know his meekness, and prove his patience. Let us 
condemn him with a shameful death.”— Wisdom ii. 19, 20. 

“ Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us 
cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be no 
more remembered.”— Jeremiah xi. 19. 

“ They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my 
bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my gar¬ 
ments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”— Psalm 
xxii. 16-18. 

“And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in 
thine hands ? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was 
wounded in the house of my friends.”— Zech. xiii. 6. 

“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised 
for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; 
and with his stripes we are healed.”— Isaiah lfii. 5. 

“Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, 
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he 
hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered 
with the transgressors.”— Isaiah liii. 12. 

“ They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone 
upon me.”— Lament, iii. 53. 

“ My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave 
my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer THINE Holy One 
to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in 
thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore.”— Psalm xvi. 9 


lx 


INTRODUCTION. 


“ O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy 
destruction.”— Hosea xiii. 14. 

“And in that day there shall be a ROOT OF JESSE, which 
shall stand for an ENSIGN of the people; to it shall the 
Gentiles seek : and his rest shall be glorious.”— Isaiah xi. 10. 

“ Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine 
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy pos¬ 
session.”— Ps. ii. 8. 

“ Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
thy footstool.”— Ps. cx. 1. 

“ At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes 
shall have respect to the HOLY One OF ISRAEL. And he 
shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands.”— Isaiah 
xvii. 7, 8. 

“ And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the 
haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone 
shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly 
abolish, ... his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which 
they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and 
to the bats.”— Isaiah ii. 17-20. 

“ In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house 
of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for 
uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the 
Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols 
out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered.”— 
Zech. xiii. 1,2. 

“ Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; 
The Lord hath called me from the womb .... and now 
saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his 
servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not 
gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and 
my God shall be my strength. And he said, It is a light 
thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes 


INTRODUCTION. 


ixi 


of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also 
give thee for a LIGHT TO THE GENTILES, that thou mayest 
be my SALVATION unto the end of the earth. . . . Lift 

up thine eyes round about, and behold : all these gather them¬ 
selves together, and come to thee.”— Isaiah xlix. i, 5-6, 18. 

“ I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I 
have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of 
h,er enemies Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest ; 
it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it”— -Jerem. 
xii. 7, 8. 

“ And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her 
lovers, and none shall deliver her out of mine hand. I will 
also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new 
moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.”— Hosea 
ii. 10, II. 

“ And after three score and two weeks shall MESSIAH BE 
CUT off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that 
shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the 
end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war 
desolations are determined.”— Daniel ix. 26. 

“ But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your 
children, and will not keep my commandments and my 
statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other 
gods, and worship them : then will I cut off Israel out of the 
land which I have given them ; and this house, which I have 
hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel 
shall be a proverb and a byword among all people: and at 
this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall 
be astonished, and shall hiss.”— I. Kings ix. 6, 7. 

“ I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son 
OF MAN came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. 
And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a 


lxii 


INTRODUCTION. 


kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve 
him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” 
—Daniel vii. 13,14. 

I beg the reader to remark that these extracts, which 
might easily be increased in number, are taken from the 
Bible as preserved by the Jews ; the books of which this 
Bible was composed were all edited many centuries before 
Jesus, and altogether they embrace a period of more than 
fourteen hundred years. 

These fragmentary passages form a complete and detailed 
picture of the Messiah ; it might easily be believed that they 
were written by the evangelists after his advent. All the 
essential features are found there: his kinship with Abraham, 
his descent from Jacob and David, his birth from a virgin, the 
universal expectation directed towards him, his birth in the 
little town of Bethlehem, his origin from everlasting in the 
Bosom of God, his Divine Sonship, his names Emmanuel and 
Saviour, his flight into Egypt, his retreat into the despised 
land of Nazareth, the coming of his predecessor, his divine 
unction by the fulness of the Spirit, his functions as prophet, 
evangelist, miracle-worker, his character of goodness without 
limit, and infinite gentleness, the mystery wherein his divine 
nature was wrapped, the failure of his mission in the midst of 
his people, the persecution and hatred by which he was pur¬ 
sued, all the details of the death he was to undergo, his agony, 
his betrayal for thirty pieces of silver by one of his own 
disciples, his abandonment by the rest of them, his cross, his 
burial, his resurrection, and, last of all, his dazzling triumph pro¬ 
claimed before the face of the world and in the full light of 
history, by the destruction of idolatry, by the terrible chastise¬ 
ment of his persecutors, by the conquest of the gentile world, by 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxiii 


the establishment of his own reign in the midst of that world 
which, in attacking him, proves his indestructible power 
and his eternity. 


IX. 

All these documents, dispersed and scattered through the 
ages, are like the stones of some huge edifice, hewn and 
carved by unknown workmen, under the inspiration of an 
invisible architect whose designs were not fully disclosed to 
any creature. 

When Christ appeared, he revealed in his person and 
work, in his doctrine and life the mystery which had been 
hidden from all generations. 1 One by one he accomplished 
all the prophecies, and realised in every detail what they had 
announced : this he said to all, and endeavoured to persuade 
his nation of it. 

The doctors refused to understand him ; they could not 
grasp the spiritual meaning of the symbolical language used 
by their prophets, nor free themselves from their pride of 
race and religion. Revolted by the elements of sorrow, 
humiliation, and death, which were among the essential 
characteristics of the true Messiah, they were unable to raise 
themselves to his divine nature, and to unite in a bold syn¬ 
thesis the double mystery of divinity and suffering humanity 
united in him. They could not recognise the imperfection 
of their law which was to disappear before the living law of 
Christ; and though their obstinate blindness before the 
Messiah had been announced by their prophets, they never 
suspected their obstinacy and blindness, and dashed them¬ 
selves against the corner-stone whereon was to be erected 
the whole building of God. 


1 Ephes. iii. 9. 


lxiv 


INTRODUCTION. 


Some few, chosen from among the ignorant and simple, 
and these the most despised, were alone initiated into this 
Messianic truth ; they learnt, in the school of Jesus, what the 
wise of their nation had been unable to see. Their faith, 
illuminated by the Spirit, confessed the divine Sonship and 
the awful mystery of the sorrows of the Son of Man; they 
recognised in him the invincible Lion of Judah, and the Lamb 
of God who endured to be slain. It is to these poor un¬ 
educated men that we are indebted for the knowledge of him 
who, being in the form of God, made himself of no reputation, 
in the form of a creature, and was obedient to his Father, even 
to the death on the cross—that punishment of slaves. 

In repudiating Jesus, in their determination not to under¬ 
stand him, the Jews lost the true sense of their Book. They 
preserve it, however, and read it; but do not understand it: 
for them it is a closed and sealed book. The Messianic 
idea, the hero and his work, are its bond of unity and life; 
and these things escape their notice: they are without mean¬ 
ing except as explained by the doctrine, the person, and the 
work of Jesus. 

Now here is an event unique in history, which we 
commend to all who reject prophecy and the prophetic books. 
The whole Bible is Messianic. If we seek for its spirit, its 
most profound and truest sense, we find that it looks to 
the coming Christ—to this future deliverer; it promises 
him, calls upon him, describes him in figures, and prepares the 
way for him. The greatest doctors among the Jews, who wrote 
the Targums of the first and second centuries, Onkelos 

j 

Jonathan, and Akiba, never hesitated thus to interpret the 
sacred Book. The passages we have quoted had no difficulty 
for them ; and in understanding them as we do, they did not 
consider they were preparing their own confusion ; for the 


INTRODUCTION. 


Ixv 


grand words of the seers of Israel apply only to the prophet 
who was cast out by the Sanhedrin, to him who triumphed on 
the cross. 

Modern commentators, who are witnesses of the undying 
triumph of Jesus, have but one weapon of attack against the 
truth of prophecy ; either to deny the reality of the Gospel 
history, or, by a narrow interpretation, to nullify the prophecy 
of that history. They have revised the Bible, and taken care 
in interpreting it, to get rid of the mystical sense and often 
to falsify the literal sense ; but their pains have been thrown 
away. The impartial study of the Biblical documents leads 
to this result : the words of the seers have no more perfect 
justification than the history of Jesus ; their sense is fulfilled 
only in him. They always more than fill the limits of the 
first sketch, and in the second sketch, which covers the whole, 
they attain to the Messiah and his work, such as God prepared 
them in his unsearchable providence, from the beginning of 
time and of all created things. 

The religion taught by Jesus and realised in him embraces 
in its living force the whole of mankind. It is like a great 
book of history in two volumes, one containing the prophecy 
of what is to be, the other the narrative of the events 
prophesied. Only the Spirit of God could have written the 
former ; he only could realise what the second contained and 
allow men to understand and narrate it. The two volumes 
are open to every eye ; no one can now falsify them. If 
Christians attacked the first, the Jews would raise a protest 
from the four corners of the world ; and if heretics or modern 
Pagans should attack the second, the Church, as wide as the 
human race, would rise to defend the Gospels. 

These are the two great witnesses of God. He is thus seen 
to be master of the times, since he announces, long before, what 
they will be, and has brought them to pass, as he foretold them, 
6 


lxvi 


INTRODUCTION. 


by the voice of prophecy. No criticism, interpretation, or 
system, no infidelity, can injure this colossal work ; but God 
has been pleased, in his relation with man, to confound the vain 
wisdom which boasts itself against him, and to disdain that 
culture which, under the name of science and philosophy, is 
eager to destroy his work. The work lives on, unhurt and in¬ 
creasing, astounding those who dash themselves against it and 
calling into its light the simple, the suffering, the humble, and 
even great souls, if they will only cease to take the measure of 
God, and give themselves to love him. 

X. 

If prophecy exists, and we have seen with what historic 
power it impresses itself on the unprejudiced mind, there 
may well be miracles also; if a Jesus of prophecy, then also 
a Jesus the worker of miracles. 

I put this question not to a Pantheist as such, not to 
a Materialist, or Positivist, or sceptic, or unbeliever, or 
believer—I put it to man. Before we are ranged under a 
system or a creed, before we are of this or that school or age, 
we all share in the same intelligent and free nature, seek¬ 
ing after truth and goodness. Hence we feel ourselves 
united through time and space, in spite of divergent civili¬ 
sations and natural boundaries. Are there miracles or not? 
I am told on the one hand that they are impossible. All 
miracles are legends or myths without reality save in the 
imagination which conceived them, in the credulity or 
imposture of the narrators. Prophecies are only books 
composed after the event; men know neither prediction nor 
miracle. 

Such is the answer of the Pantheist, Materialist, or 
Positivist. According to these systems, it is logical; but it is 
not the answer given by mankind. It is not yet demonstrated 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxvii 


that Pantheism and Materialism are the truth, nor that 
Positivism is an infallible rule. If these philosophers are 
deceived and in error, as it would be easy to show, their 
answer is worth nothing; and for him who rejects them, their 
dogma of the impossibility of miracles has no authority. 

There is moreover an insult to the dignity of man, and a 
failure in the respect to which every witness is entitled, in all 
these systems which take upon themselves to regard as knaves 
and fools those who have solemnly and seriously reported 
miracles they have seen and prophetic discourses they have 
heard. Criticism thus conceived is not worthy of the name; it 
is a false scale, which will always deceive those who try to use 
it. I appeal to the criticism of pure impersonal reason. 

Miracle is a fact which takes place outside the laws of 
nature, by the intervention of forces superior to nature, and 
even of that force which, in creating nature, has determined 
its laws. Now reason cannot demonstrate that this force does 
not exist, and that it is neither intelligent nor free. If this 
force exists, reason cannot prove that it may not intervene 
in the web of human events, or in the succession of the 
phenomena of the universe, and communicate to created in¬ 
telligences a knowledge of the future. 

It is certain that at no time, in no school, and in no system, 
have such conclusions been proven. We have been waiting 
for this proof through centuries ; it cannot be furnished, for it 
does not exist. Great intellects, in revolt against God, have 
sought it, and not finding it, are forced into systematic nega¬ 
tion ; but what they persistently deny in the name of system, 
we calmly affirm in the name of pure reason; for systems 
change, and pure reason changes not. 

Scientific philosophy speaks of unchangeable laws, 
confounding regularity with immutability. If they are not 
unchangeable, we are told, all science becomes impossible, just 


lxviii 


INTRODUCTION. 


because it is founded on those laws. This is mere sophistry. 
Science is founded on determinism ; but the passing interven¬ 
tion of a superior being in a determinism ascertained by ex¬ 
perience is no argument against regularity. This intervention 
is only a new element which leads back to a higher unity, 
involving in its immense circle nature, man, and the God who 
rules them. 

The weakness of the thesis which seeks to establish 
the impossibility of miracle and prophecy is so evident, 
even for those who hold it, that, when pressed too closely 
by relentless logic, they at once revert to the non-existence of 
supernatural phenomena. They say that these do not exist, 
because they have never seen them, and in proof they assert 
that our scientific experience has never established them. But 
the scientific experience of a few philosophers and a few years 
can demonstrate nothing; even were it exact, it is valueless 
for those ages which are the witnesses of things now not seen. 
We are not witnesses of the beginnings of life in a world not 
yet alive; but this fact does not authorise us to contest 
that amazing phenomenon; we are not witnesses of the first 
appearance of man among non-speaking and non-thinking 
animals; our defective experience does not authorise us to 
deny the advent of the first human pair. We have never seen 
in any people, in any land, the rise of a being like Jesus; and 
yet Christ has lived and revealed himself. 

To attempt to measure, by the experiment of a day or a 
century, even when the experience is that of academic precisians, 
unprejudiced and fair, phenomena which filled the space of 
time anterior to nature and man, seems either so ingenious 
or so daring that it is idle to answer such simplicity or 
presumption. 

Our opponents have attempted to include under the de- 


INTRODUCTION. 


Ixix 


nominations of legends, fables, and myths, miracles such as 
the Gospel documents record, as well as those which we may 
read in the sacred books of other religions, those of India, the 
Vedas, the Lalitavistara, the Lotos of the Good Law and 
others, those of China, the Kings, those of Mahomet, the 
Koran ; but such a confusion is unjust and offensive, and must 
be cleared up by establishing an essential difference between 
miracle and the marvellous. 

Miracle is a fact essentially conceivable, because in itself it 
implies no contradiction—there is a reason for its appearance 
and a moral end. The marvellous, on the contrary, is often 
absurd ; when we seek for a cause which might have pro¬ 
duced it, we find none, and, if we wish to discover the intent, 
it seems vain or immoral. 

If we examine, one by one and in detail, the miraculous 
facts of which the life of Jesus is full, and compare them with 
those in the sacred books of Buddha or of Mahomet, or even 
with the stories in the Apocryphal Gospels, we shall see the 
difference between miracle which reason can and ought to 
accept, if it be certified by trustworthy witnesses, and the 
fantastic marvels which reason must inexorably repudiate, 
even were they attested by so-called witnesses. There can be 
no witness against supreme truth ; whoever testifies against 
it is either deceived or a deceiver. There can be no hesita¬ 
tion ; the shedding of blood could at most only prove the 
sincerity of a martyr’s illusions. He must not be treated as a 
knave, but as a visionary and a fanatic. 

The miracles of Jesus, reported in the Gospels, present one 
and all the same character of divine power, of truth, simplicity, 
harmony, and goodness. They have nothing so strange as 
those which legend has attributed to Buddha and Mahomet, 
nothing which looks like ostentation, or a design to astonish 
the crowd and inspire alarm. They are always stamped with 


lxx 


INTRODUCTION. 


gentleness and infinite pity ; like him who wrought them, they 
reveal his power, linked with an unfailing tenderness. The 
cause which produced them is in the living God, concealed 
under the manhood of Jesus, and their end is the good of man 
All have for their aim the enlightenment of man, they tend 
to touch his heart, to ameliorate his lot, to inspire trust and 
instil virtue; they are thus consecrated by the purest 
morality and most perfect sanctity. 

The prodigies with which the legends of certain men have 
been overlaid do not make a real part of their history; they 
can be severed from it without harming the consistent chain 
of events. Mahomet’s work can be explained, his struggles 
his precepts, his success, his ascendency over the Arabs, with¬ 
out prodigies ; but Jesus is inexplicable without his miracles. 
They are an essential element in his mission: by them he 
gained the faith of his disciples and convinced them of his 
Messianic calling ; by them he exercised a powerful influence 
on the people, and was able to affirm and demonstrate the 
truth of his teaching. Even after his death, in his continued 
life in the world, he remains essentially miraculous ; his work 
is the greatest of prodigies- No philosophy of history can 
explain, without the constant intervention of the Spirit of 
God, that great and indestructible society, publishing to every 
creature a crucified God, protesting against all human passions 
and all vices, against tyrannic power and slavery, teaching 
salvation by faith in this crucified God, by humility and 
penitence, by love and self-sacrifice. 

Such a doctrine and such virtues cannot be based upon 
nature or humanity, since these wage against them a constant 
merciless war. Beyond nature and humanity there is God 
alone, and we must recognise God revealed in Jesus as the 
immovable mainstay of faith, and of the sanctity of believers. 

There is yet another striking and absolutely unique 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxi 


characteristic of the miracles of Jesus ; they are all symbolical 
and prophetical; and according to the expression emphasized 
by the fourth Gospel, they deserve the name of signs. They 
interpret to the senses one of the invisible functions of the divine 
power of Jesus to save humanity and transform the conscience; 
they all prophesy what this divine power is to accomplish in 
the ages to come, both in the depths of the soul and in the 
open daylight of the Church. 1 

XI. 

All the critics who have depended upon some particular 
theory implying the negation of miracle, have seen the neces- 
sity of getting rid of the miraculous facts contained in the 
Gospel records; and their method demands notice. As 
soon as they find themselves in presence of any prophecy 
it is declared to be an interpolation, added as an after¬ 
thought. The interpolator or forger has never been found, 
but none the less he is a certainty. Prophecy does not exist, 
and is impossible; but only for those who do not admit God, 
and they have never given convincing proof of their theory 

The process of elimination as applied to miraculous facts 
is manifold. The mythical school born some fifty years ago, 
and already dead, declared all these facts to be the invention 
of early Christians, who had in their minds a conventional 
type of the expected Messianic hero, and a superior being, 
named Jesus, having persuaded them that he was this hero, 
all these traits were attributed to him. But the mythical 
school has given no certain and positive proof of this work 
of creative legend ; nor has it explained by any certain 

1 I must refer the reader to the body of this work to prove the view 
which I can here only indicate. 


lxxii 


INTRODUCTION. 


evidence how Jesus the carpenter exercised, unless by a 
miracle, such an ascendency over his disciples, that he subdued 
them to be his apostles, and made them heroes of fidelity and 
virtue. The witness of the narrators who affirm and attest 
the truth of their accounts has never been refuted. The 
narrators must have lied when they glorified their Master, and 
history is only a cheat. I need not refute these exploded 
theories. 

The older rationalistic school in Germany made use of a 
literary process to get rid of the Gospel miracle. The whole 
life of Jesus was really like our human lives ; wherein was 
nothing abnormal, nothing miraculous; the most simple 
events were clothed with a miraculous character by the way 
in which the writers told them. They were poetical, and 
embellished ; they took an optical illusion for the reality; the 
dead were only asleep; the possessed of devils were only 
epileptic or maniacal ; ignorance, credulity, and Oriental 
imagination gave to the life of Jesus that legendary and 
supernatural aspect of which true scientific criticism must 
divest it. This method, which the Germans Semler and 
Paulus misused so wearisomely, has quickly succumbed to 
the derision of the mythical school itself. 

These are the sole tools of anti-miraculous criticism, at the 
service of Pantheistic, Materialistic, or Atheistic systems, forged 
in Germany and imitated in France, where they have been 
rendered more keen and subtle, and used with a lighter 
and more dexterous hand; but they have not succeeded in 
destroying the sure foundations of the history of J esus. 

We must take the history as it is, or deny it as a whole. 
To take away all in it that is transcendent and miraculous, is 
to destroy it, not in itself, for it defies destruction, but in the 
minds of those who try to purify it, as they say, from its super¬ 
natural element. 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxiii 


If the subject be a life of Jesus treated according to the 
rules of history, the necessary questions and the short answers 
of all impartial criticism, based on pure reason alone, are as 
follows: What are the documents wherein the facts of this 
life have been written ? 

The four Gospels. 

Have these writings sprung from the immediate witnesses 
of the events, or from those who have had access to the 
immediate witnesses ? 

Yes. 

Does their antiquity, and, therefore, their authenticity, 
appear certain and based on convincing proof ? 

Yes ; and even unbelieving critics recognise this. 

Are the recorded facts, even when abnormal and miraculous, 
conceivable, implying no contradiction, whether examined in 
detail, or judged as a whole ? 

They are conceivable, their harmony is indissoluble and of 
a perfect unity; they have as their cause the infinite power of 
God intervening by the humanity of Jesus, who is its mighty 
instrument; they have for their end the virtue, instruction, 
salvation, and sanctity of men, and the manifestation of the 
unspeakable mercy of God. 

Can the witnesses of all these marvellous works be 
refuted ? 

No; their holy life and their martyrdom attest their 
sincerity ; they prove not only that they believe what they 
affirm, but that what they affirm is real; for their affirmation 
has for its object palpable, external, sensible, and public facts 
about which there can be no mistake. 


lxxiv 


INTRODUCTION. 


XII. 

When criticism has accomplished its work, proved and 
chosen its materials, history may begin to build the edifice. 

The essential elements of the life of Jesus are furnished 
by the Gospels. He who examines them impartially, by the 
light of criticism and free from all philosophic prepossession, 
anterior to all faith, a criticism which alone has the right to 
be called the criticism of pure and impersonal reason; that 
criticism, even when faith is absent, must accept them in their 
absolute integrity, without alteration or diminution, and 
without the loss of a single fact or word. 

All in them is historical and real, and above all the 
miraculous facts, and the most transcendent because most 
mysterious words of Jesus. In this work they will be found 
in their entirety, harmonised and combined.* Even if my faith 
had not rendered it a sacred duty to gather them together un¬ 
reservedly, my reason alone as an impartial historian would 
have imposed it on me. Far from seeking to reduce the 
extraordinary events of this unique life and the doctrine 
intermingled with these events to the proportions of my own 
mind, I have endeavoured to raise myself to the height of 
the things which I relate, and to efface myself before the 
infinite Wisdom whose teachings I reproduce. Such a tone 
of mind is a guarantee of fidelity, for man is naturally 
inclined to substitute his own sentiments and ideas for those 
he endeavours to represent; if he mixes new things and old 
he will probably falsify the history of the past. 

A historical work is above all things descriptive and 
pictorial; it ought to paint the facts exactly, to reproduce them 
in an animated and varied narrative, which makes them, as 
it were, present to the mind of the readers in despite of time. 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxv 


and shows dead men living in despite of death. I do not believe 
that any book, in this respect, can be compared to the Gospels. 
The scenes which they describe, the pictures which they draw, 
are models of art; they possess simplicity and grandeur, 
sobriety and distinctness of detail. Without a thought of artistic 
rules, scarce known to them, careful only to narrate in 
language accurate but scarcely correct, the life of their Master, 
they, out of the fulness of their recollections, have left a perfect 
example of a descriptive history. I have reproduced their 
narrative with scrupulous fidelity, and in order to give it 
exactly I have respected even its incorrect expressions—so 
striking at times by their very roughness. I should have dis¬ 
honoured it by adding to or subtracting from it. The Gospels 
are pictures by consummate masters ; it is impossible to im¬ 
prove great works of art. 

It will be said that there is no further need to write about 
Jesus ; the Gospels, because perfect, are enough ; no more 
should be attempted than to reduce them to harmony, and 
translate them into our modern languages. But history is not 
only a narration of facts ; if it be first and above all a pictorial 
work, its duty is to frame the facts and replace them in their 
surroundings. Every event is subject to the laws of time and 
space ; the mind can only conceive it by going back to the 
points of space and time at which it was done. The point in 
space is indicated by geography ; the point of time by the 
general history of the nation and of mankind. The descrip¬ 
tion of a fact is complete only so far as it is shown not only in 
itself, but in this double surrounding. It is often incompre¬ 
hensible, and remains inexplicable, if we take it away from its 
setting. 

When we write on contemporary events, for men of our 
own age, we assume that they know the geographical and 
historical scene of these events, and when we record facts 


lxxvi 


INTRODUCTION. 


vve leave it to them to place them there; so did the evan¬ 
gelists when they wrote the life of their Master for the first 
Christians. Moreover, the mere fact was enough for them; 
it always contained some eternal element, superior to time 
and space, and in neglecting, perhaps deliberately, the con¬ 
ditions of time and place, they set the Son of God in the 
immensity of the ages and above the earth, and the person 
they described was great enough to answer to the needs of all 
the ages and of all the earth. 

But we who have not, as they, seep Christ living, acting 
and speaking, we, who only see him as he is from all eternity, 
must be allowed to replace him in his earthly and human 
setting, in that land of Palestine which has kept the traces 
of his passage and been the witness of his life. We must be 
allowed to replace him in Jewish society, among his fellow- 
citizens, the crowd which pressed upon his steps, and in that 
Judaean world whose anger he incurred, whose stubbornness 
and blindness he experienced. I have considered this work 
not only legitimate, but indispensable, in order to understand 
the acts and life of Jesus, his sorrows, and the form of his 
teaching. 

A fact is altered if taken away from its surroundings; 
perfect as a painting may be, it needs a fit and harmonious 
frame, that the scale of colour and tone be not falsified and 
that it gain in force. I have carefully endeavoured to frame 
the life of Jesus in what I will call his pictorial and geo¬ 
graphical surroundings, and in his social and Jewish life. Two 
long journeys enabled me very closely to study Palestine, 
the land of Jesus; I have travelled through it slowly, in 
every direction, following the traces of the Master from 
Bethlehem and Hebron to the boundaries of Tyre and Sidon 
and the sources of Jordan. I stayed long in those very places 
where Jesus lived the longest, where he strove and suffered 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxvii 


most ardently, taught the most, and loved the most I have 
endeavoured to see the places as they were eighteen hundred 
years ago; their present desolation, their heaps of ruins, the 
buildings raised by the piety of Christians, have scarce left 
anything of their primitive state. I have examined ancient 
traditions, questioned the most experienced travellers, above 
all, studied the Gospels; indeed I may say that I lived them 
there, in the land wherein all their narrative was accomplished. 
Those who have assailed the reality of the history of Jesus 
cannot have seen Palestine ; if they had studied it, the Gospel 
in hand, they would have understood that the Gospel was 
not invented. 

No life presents a closer harmony with the land in which 
it was spent than that of Christ. Galilee, with the town of 
Nazareth, the Lake of Tiberias, Tabor with its hills and its 
green valleys, make a fitting frame for Jesus, living for thirty 
years unknown, for the apostle, the popular teacher, announ¬ 
cing the Gospel of the Kingdom, instructing the crowd in 
parables, leading them into the desert, and revealing in the 
mountain to the disciples his eternal glory. On the other 
hand, Judaea, austere and arid, with its rocky hills, Jerusalem 
with its valley of Cedron and gloomy tombs, harmonize well 
with the Prophet, misconstrued and rejected, condemned to 
an ignominious death. I seem to have gained, in contact with 
Palestine, with its ruins and the sacred memories of which it 
is full, a profound feeling of the Gospel facts and their truth, 
their reality, and their beauty. The facts are inseparable 
from the land. It may become sadder yet, more desolate and 
more dead ; it always frames them in its light, in its valleys 
and undulating hills, in the roads where Jesus passed, and 
where endless generations still pass and repass after him. 

To reconstitute the social surroundings wherein Jesus 
lived is more difficult than to describe the places predestined 


Ixxviii 


INTRODUCTION. 


for his action, and is perhaps the most complex and difficult 
work of history. We can attempt the portrait of a man, but 
not that of an age, a time, a civilisation, at a definite point in 
its existence ; yet it is impossible to understand a man, above 
all a public man, if we do not study him in the society to 
which he belonged. Now, a society is made up of a thousand 
elements, which, in spite of all efforts, and with the most 
varied and exact information, it is impossible to reproduce 
in their complexity, their shifting character and their activity ; 
and all that the sincere historian can attempt is to describe 
the religious and political organization of a people, to 
enumerate and explain the parties which moved within its 
organization, to point out its philosophical doctrines and 
creeds, its prejudices, way of life, morals, and traditional 
customs, its national and political passions. However 
imperfect this restoration may be, it throws much light upon 
the life of a man. Many words of Jesus, many facts in his 
life, explain themselves, without comment, so soon as they are 
placed in their true surroundings. 

When the historian has replaced the facts of a human life 
in their natural frame, he has only gained the power of 
describing them ; it is then no less necessary a task to group 
them in their chronological order. History is the record of 
events in their proper sequence, the unity of a life is not con¬ 
ceivable without this interdependence. One of the difficult 
problems of the life of Jesus is to determine exactly the suc¬ 
cession of facts which the documents relate for us, and which 
constitute his public life. The indications of time given by 
the third and fourth Gospels, and by some secular historians, 
illuminated moreover by astronomy and numismatics atten¬ 
tively studied and compared, enable us to arrive at a definite 
result. The reader will find in the first Appendix, under the 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxix 


title of “ General Chronology of the Life of Jesus,” the reasons 
which have enabled me to fix the birth of Jesus between the 
years 747-749, the year 27-28 as the date of his baptism, 
the year 28-29 as that of his Galilaean ministry, and the year 
30 for his death. I am aware of the numerous divergences 
which, on these points, divide the chronologists and the 
historians of Jesus ; but I believe that these divergences, 
which do not exceed seven years, for the extreme time of 
his birth and his death, reduced to one year for the duration 
of his public life, are of little importance when the sub¬ 
stance of the history is considered. In every case they 
authorise the writer to take some liberty, if he show reason 
for the conclusion he adopts. 

Some authors are of opinion that the public life lasted 
seven years. If such an opinion be accepted, it must rely on 
the Gospel documents and not on later authorities. Now, it 
may be discussed, whether according to the Gospels there were 
three Passovers or four in the ministry of Jesus ; but we can¬ 
not discover one more or less. Whatever system we adopt, 
the entire life of Jesus was transacted between two fixed and 
incontestable dates; he was born before the death of Herod, 
which took place in the spring of the year 750 or 751, and he 
certainly died before Pilate quitted Judaea, that is to say, 
before the year 36 of the common era. 

When once the facts of a life have been described and 
classed according to an accurate chronology, the historian has 
only one duty remaining, but it is the most arduous and the 
most delicate of all ; that of explaining them, of showing their 
nature, importance and connection, their interdependence, 
causes, and consequences, without however altering, minimising 
or disfiguring them. I have attempted this work, with infinite 
humility, in regard to a life like that of Jesus. Every one of his 


lxxx 


INTRODUCTION. 


words and acts has seemed to me like a diamond or a precious 
pearl; I have been content to imitate the art of the jeweller in 
sorting the stones, cut by a divine hand, and in mounting them 
I have only endeavoured to give them more relief and greater 
brightness. 

To comprehend the acts of Christ and his doctrine, the 
auxiliary sciences of history, psychology, ethics, philosophy, 
theodicy, sociology, anthropology, are not enough; Jesus 
exceeds them all; no one can wholly contain him. His life, at 
every moment, routs what we are pleased to call our psycho¬ 
logy, ethics, philosophy, sociology and anthropology, as well 
as our feeble and timid theodicy. Therefore, when I appeal 
to these sciences, so far as I am conversant with them, I have 
never hesitated to lift them up to Jesus, and have never 
attempted to confine him by them; when he is greater than 
they, he does not destroy, but gives clearness to them. The 
greatest monument raised by theology to the glory of Jesus 
is St. Thomas Aquinas’ 1 treatise on the Incarnation. No 
intellect has ever explained in a more powerful synthesis, with 
stronger reasoning, and more exact psychology, the mystery of 
Christ. Every life of Jesus should contain the whole of it, 
in order to be in the full light of his doctrine. I owe to this 
master all that is good in my attempt to reach what may be 
called the Christian philosophy of this history. 

XIII. 

In beginning this work, I have not concealed from myself 
either its greatness or its difficulty; I have felt them growing 
as my task proceeded, and now that I see it ended I am con¬ 
scious of its incompleteness and inadequacy ; yet I have spared 
no effort to render it less unworthy of him whose history I 

1 Summa theolog. 3 Pars. 


INTRODUCTION. 


Ixxxi 


have told. One profound conviction has sustained me: 
Christ, living and acting by his Spirit in the Church, is the 
salvation of men and of nations to day. To rally round him 
the consciences of a country, an age, or even only to attempt 
this, is to render great service to that age and country. 

Modern civilisation, with its ardent aspirations for 
righteousness, for the freedom and the well-being of even the 
least, for charity and peace is born of Jesus. He who has 
given life can alone preserve it, subdue selfishness, curb 
violence, and bring under subjection the wild passions which 
devour us. He accomplishes these marvels in the inner con¬ 
science ; it is our business to let him accomplish it in our 
land. The strife which tears us asunder is nothing but the 
deadly strife between old persistent paganism and the new 
reign of the Gospel. I have desired to work as an apostle 
for the new kingdom of God, the spiritual kingdom of the 
Church, of the man who is free from all human service and the 
most terrible bondage of all, since it begets all, that of evil, 
ignorance and vice. As Jesus appealed to the conscience 
more than to science, and since he spoke to all, this book, 
which attempts to call him up before the age, is addressed 
to the conscience of my contemporaries, without, however, 
disdaining science. 

A lively prejudice of the present day declares that the 
divorce is complete and irremediable between science and 
faith. I have combated this prejudice all my life with a 
conviction which experience has only confirmed ; I will assail 
it to my latest breath, and I will never cease to harmonize my 
eternal faith and my modern culture. Neither in politics nor 
history, in natural science nor philosophy, has ever one fact 
been ascertained to demonstration, or one law which 
contradicts the word of Jesus, as the Church guards it, 
immovable and incorruptible. The trial has lasted through 
7 


Ixxxii 


INTRODUCTION. 


long ages, and, because it is triumphant, the race of men who 
keep their faith, I do not say in a pure conscience, but in an 
independent and manly reason, eager for all new truth, and 
inflexible against the prejudice of the moment, whether 
opinion is in their favour or not, lasts, and will last, for ever. 

I know that between the Christ of faith and cultivated 
minds of our time there have been many misunderstandings ; 
perhaps this work may scatter some of them. Written in 
solitude and silence, far from all which sets men asunder, 
the fruit of the long and persevering work, I may say, of my 
whole life, it has been no work agitated by polemics, but a 
quiet work of history and faith. It has seemed to me, as I 
wrote the life of our Master, that his loveliness, his sweetness, 
his wisdom, his saintliness, his love, his divinity, shining 
through all his acts and sorrows, would defend him better 
than our weak arguments and our empty angers. I trust 
that something of him, a breath of his soul and spirit, may 
have passed into these pages. I would hand on to all what 
he has given to me. 

In spite of all, Jesus remains the great figure in the heaven 
of all Christian people. Righteousness, glowing with charity 
such as he would have it, has become the sovereign law of the 
world, impressed on every conscience ; and even those who 
have lost faith in Christ preserve his morality, forgetting that 
it comes from him. The power of self-sacrifice, the lever 
which Jesus placed in the hands of his disciples, is 
permanent ; true believers are always ready to give their 
life, if mankind, in the least of its children, can be freed from 
evil, ignorance, sorrow, and death. 

To Christ, as the Church knows him, I would turn the 
eyes of this generation. It is sick : he will heal it ; old 
and worn : he will restore its youth and its great dreams ; for 
his disciples are men of eternal hope. It is accused of being 


INTRODUCTION. 


lxxxiii 


positive, of believing only in what it can see, use, and enjoy: 
he will teach it to see the invisible, to taste the immaterial, to 
understand that the most useful man to himself and to others, 
to his country and to mankind, is he who can sacrifice himself, 
and that of all good things the one most pleasing to a refined 
taste is self-sacrifice. It is said to be greedy of pleasure 
and gold ; perhaps there is the cause of its decadence, for 
pleasure kills, and gold may lead to every vice. Christ 
will teach it to despise pleasure and to employ those riches 
well, which abound in proportion as the earth is wisely 
subdued. 

In every case the world is a prey to a thousand sorrows, 
desires, and needs ; those who proclaim the joy of life know 
well that the joy is not unmingled with pain, and that death is 
all the more cruel because it breaks a happy life. Christ alone 
teaches the joy of suffering, because he alone pours into the 
soul a divine life which no sorrow destroys, which trial 
strengthens, and he alone teaches us to despise death, because 
we can look at it with hope. 

If I might venture to borrow the words of the greatest 
evangelist, I would say : “ These things are written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” That is the faith 
of the Church ; which I confess in the fulness of my reason and 
my liberty. To her infallible judgment I commit this book 
approving what she approves, rejecting what she rejects, 
remembering the words of Jesus : “ Who heareth you heareth 
me ; who despiseth you, despiseth me.” 




BOOK I. 


THE BIRTH OF JESU& 









32° 30' 


135° Longitude £ut of Greenwich, 


MAP 




TYRE | 




I INI THE TIME OF CHRIST 

drawn by 


Kidat.r 




Xoikl en'llun//) 


(r-tpi 


\mnchtm, 


unfiitipah 


PERE DID ON 


. Vfrrvtnhfii ^" ‘ 


Jobeil 


•V aJiib'd 






f/Y< 7 l 


fomz/’OTl- 


Scale of 600.000 


■ lirnn ' YaJtm 


w Tell/ eL-Fe/tas 


A: 


JenmJk 




<jf Syna<)oif\ 


K i Tbarah J 


licit-Ana m 3 % \ 


jfiethstiida/Juluts 

Mikttlu 




.oTumt'yih M 

\btafuiu* 
■irbet Kina. et-Jrbxl/> 


HAIFi 


Shrfa 1 Oj 


IBERIAS 




Ya/dL 


O ' 

Jadara)^ $f> 


Ihune/i Jbiyer f ,s^ T 


cZ 

QlegidJx))' 


°In-el-F a~hni 


JENIN 




qW;. w , 


'-£u-tsah 


fukAaUd 


y £ctrin/(£dha7‘ 




teggf 


’Sebastc 

Tirzah 0 


fosephls To mi? 
faccbo Well 


SmSS* 


Kurn Surtabi 
.(tarkaijahy 




yafa 

(JOPPA) 




' t AbfidT^iSi 


iVd<hl (IWpolis ) : , , 




(Axcc^ 


Gibeort, <T% 
dJfiglhetbJl (Fingyc^f 


■ 5 copU^li>t^Bt-j 

rC Qllv#^<_ 
ft- 


F/ylkhv 


^/OtRUSALE! 

TofrJj ( 

% .^ETHLEHEjyi 


shbon 


^VshrLod 


A8CAL0N 


I leii-Jibi 

.leuttyfropc 




HEBR' 


GAZA 


JiMafi/ 


Krioth/ 


Maab 


34°i 30 


Longitude E&st of Peris 


'V 


APPI FTOH C c 


































































































































































CHAPTER I. 


THE TIME. 

The life of Christ forms not only the last scene in a national 
drama occupying a space of nearly twenty centuries, from the 
time of Abraham to the destruction of the Jewish people, 
it fills universal history, of which it is the centre and the 
pinnacle. In Jesus all things end, and in him everything 
begins. After two thousand years his personality remains the 
most living and necessary, the most spoken against and the 
most unconquerable. 

Before relating the story of his life, we must examine 
the state of mankind, when he who loved to call himself 
the “ Son of Man ” was born. 

Every age contains a certain number of general facts 
which characterise it and sum up its complex life. Just as it 
would be impossible to judge of modern times without taking 
account of democracy and socialism in the social order; of the 
influence of armies and assemblies in the political order; of 
experimental science in the intellectual order; of Christianity 
and unbelief in the religious order; so, when we study the age 
of the Messiah, it is impossible not to take account of four grand 
facts: Roman policy, Paganism, Greek philosophy,and Judaism. 
They dominate and contain all; mixed together, they act on 


2 


JESUS CHRIST. 


each other, each in its own fashion stirred consciences and 
nations, and their providential action is the only explanation 
of the movement which, from the beginning, bore mankind 
towards its destined goal. 


/ 


The Roman Empire was the assemblage under one sceptre 
of almost all the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the 
greatest conquering and organizing political power which the 
world has ever seen. 

Greece and Italy, the islands and shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, Asia Minor and the centre of Asia, Syria, and 
Phoenicia, Egypt and Western Africa, Spain and Gaul,Germany 
from the Danube to the Rhine, were all conquered by Rome. 
Her legions, generals, and governors covered the earth. Her 
military roads started from the Forum and spread northwards 
to Scotland, westward to Lusitania and the ocean, southward to 
the Thebais, eastward to the desert of Arabia. The authority 
of the Roman people was over all, with its law, its language 
and customs. The rest of the world, Northern Germany, 
Armenia, the kingdom of Parthia, India and China, Arabia 
and Ethiopia, were the frontiers of this colossal empire. 

Augustus was on the throne, holding in his hand all power 
and authority, he was Tribune, Prefect and High Priest, in 
one word, Imperator. He bore a name reserved for the gods 
alone; he sent his surveyors to measure the world, census- 
takers to catalogue his riches and to number his subjects. 
He constructed roads, built aqueducts, temples, and towns, and 
gave his people bread, games, and festivals, even to satiety. 

After having everywhere brought ruin and devastation, 
the beast of the prophet Daniel lay down to rest. Round 
him the nations which had not obeyed him were for a moment 
quiet; the universe seemed to sleep under the wing of 
the Roman eagle; peace was universal. A great historian 
was recounting the glory of the most powerful among the 
nations, two great poets were celebrating it, one in immortal 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


3 


odes, the other in the most musical of epics. The temple of 
Janus was closed ; for twelve years the god of war had not 
issued from it. 

In this hour of silence, when the sword slept, he was born 
to whom the prophets gave the names of “ Father of a new 
time,” “Prince of Peace.” 1 It was a great date in human 
history; never had political power realised so vast a work; 
the material and administrative unity, the fusion of almost 
all nations in the known world was a giant’s task. The 
art was great indeed which could subdue and annex, colonise 
and assimilate, temporise and dare, organise conquest, and 
remain tolerant, each in order the better to rule. When 
Rome could not make a province out of a conquered state, 
she imposed upon it a sort of vassalage; in default of 
governors, she was content with native kings wisely chosen, 
and these kings only reigned by her favour, to be in her hand 
instruments of servitude, “ ut haberet instrumenta servitutis et 
reges ,” as Tacitus says. Moreover, she always exacted 
tribute; and the sovereigns, to whom she allowed any power 
only kept the semblance of independence on condition that 
they bought it with the weight of gold and many presents. 
Herod the Idumaean, among others, the petty King of Judaea, 
knew how great was the Roman greed and how to satisfy it. 

What Rome could not suppress, she accepted, but modified. 
If she did not feel herself strong enough to proscribe a 
religion among her subjects, as Druidism among the Gauls, 
she romanised the gods and raised to them altars with Gallo- 
Roman names. Belenus became Belenus-Apollo ; Camulus, 
Mars-Camulus ; Arduine, Diana-Arduine ; and if she deter¬ 
mined to put down and absolutely prohibit human sacrifices, 
she said to those whom she did not wish to irritate : “ At this 
price you may become Roman citizens.” 

Thanks to this politic and patient temper, at the end of 
seven centuries she had succeeded in building up a prosperous 


1 Isaiah ix. 6. 


4 


JESUS CHRIST. 


magnificence before which everything paled ; even the empire 
of Alexander, the monarchies of the East, Egypt and the 
Pharaohs. Such a task may impress the mind by its results ; 
it disturbs and revolts the conscience by its methods. In the 
development of mankind it answers to that need of unity 
which is one of the sovereign laws of every living creature, 
because without it nothing in mankind or nature can live and 
increase. For many ages, drawn far away from their common 
cradle, races and nations were seeking and calling to each 
other ; from this time they were more nearly united, even if 
they were enslaved under a power which carried centralisa¬ 
tion to excess. Slavery is detestable, as are conquests and 
violence, for it displays the selfishness and ferocity of the 
human animal; but unity is divine, for it answers to the in¬ 
tention of Providence. That unity which Rome realised after 
seven centuries of strife became the condition of a still higher 
unity, that of the Kingdom of God. Military roads would 
henceforward become the ways of the apostles, those sword¬ 
less conquerors to whom Jesus would say, “Go, teach all 
nations.” 1 Roman law was to bend before the law of the 
Gospel, and a peace which was only the exhaustion of 
tyranny was to be succeeded by the peace which is the calm 
of a liberty obedient to God. 

Such is the world’s way. Man works unconsciously for 
the eternal purposes; whether he obeys his better genius or 
allows himself to be led astray by his most violent and evil 
instincts, he remains the instrument of God, and he carries 
out, unwitting, the plans of which Providence keeps the 
secret, and of which the wonderful order and beauty, no 
less than the profound wisdom, can be seen only long after 
their execution. 

Over and above the political facts were the religious facts. 
Politics relate to that force which binds together the nations 


1 Matt, xxviii. 19. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


5 


materially and from outside ; religion is the power which holds 
them in a spiritual chain and by conscience. The barbarians 
in their forests ; great nations like the Hindoos and Chinese, 
behind their mountains ; the Parthians and Arabs, in their 
vast desert plains; the Ethiopians under their torrid sky, 
submitted at last to one; but there was no race, no country, 
no state, except the Jewish, unaffected by it in religious 
matters. Egyptians and Syrians, Phoenicians and Cartha¬ 
ginians, Armenians and Parthians, Greeks and Romans, 
Germans and Celts, civilised men and savages, Aryans, 
Semites, and Turanians, all, without exception, were carried 
as by a torrent to the same religious aberrations which 
the Christian conscience, four centuries later, brought 
under the one opprobrious name of Paganism. 

In spite of the apparent diversity of theogonies and 
cosmogonies, mythologies and legends, symbols and rites, 
hierarchies and sacerdotal castes, the pagan worships reveal 
to the observer a common essence which justifies a common 
appellation. The same confused, unreflecting sentiment ot 
the divine, the same basis of truths half concealed, innate 
or hereditary: the unity of God, immortality and future life, 
the law and need of bloody sacrifice, connect them with 
the eternal religion ; but everywhere the same absurdities 
corrupt the divine sense, and everywhere the same errors 
disfigure religious truth. 

All, carried away by a more or less conscious pantheism, 
identify God with Nature, and confound both in one and 
the same substance, in that they deify nature and materialise 
God. All misunderstand the transcendent unity of God, 
and, blinded by anthropomorphism, they personify the divine 
attributes as forces of the universe. All are weighed down 
by the same unchangeable fatalism; they forget the moral law, 
and place their safety less in the fulfilment of duty than in 
mysterious rites, strange, indecent, and cruel. All alike 
imagine a vague and gloomy immortality, of transmigrations 


6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


and metempsychosis, with final absorption into the bosom of 
nature, a stepmother greedy to create and destroy; all raise 
man to the divine by apotheosis ; all sanction the principles 
of caste and slavery, homicide and depravity. It is impossible 
to conceive a more radical perversion of the very essence of 
religion; the part of religion in conscience and humanity is 
to reveal God, to unite man to God, to release him from the 
yoke of passions and terrestrial forces which bring him under 
servitude and materialise him, to lay upon him his duty as the 
very law of God, to sustain him in his strife against evil, to 
comfort him in sorrow, to refresh him by hope and faith in 
eternal justice, and, because he is sinful, to teach him 
the meaning of repentance and expiation, and, in that he 
must die, to keep him calm in the face of immortality, by 
teaching him how to subdue death and die in God. 

Now all Paganism, from the gross fetishism of savages to 
the learned religions of Egypt, the graceful mythologies of 
Greece, and the rites so firmly organized by imperial Rome, is 
only one long outrage on this divine mission ; instead of 
revealing God it obscures him, changes him, and degrades his 
idea. This inexpressible, transcendent power, above all types 
and representations, this power, which alone could reveal itself 
without thereby suffering diminution, mankind, carried away 
by an unbridled imagination, has represented under many 
forms. Fevered by a sort of sensual drunkenness, it identified 
it with nature, decomposed it into a thousand personalities, 
incarnated it in matter, made it man, male and female, giving 
to it strange symbols, at once fantastic, grotesque, and cynical, 
borrowed from heaven and earth, from the vegetable and 
animal world, and even from our passions and our vices. 
Nor was there any ground for shrinking from this coarse 
realism ; if the universe be God, then is it divine and sacred. 
Instead of lifting the soul towards God, Paganism brought it 
under the yoke of nature, made it adore what it ought to 
subdue, and misunderstand what it ought to adore. It 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


7 


destroyed man’s relations with the divine, and defiled, in so 
doing, the only source from which man can for ever draw 
truth and justice, power and hope, consolation and life. 

Conscience has nothing to hope from the foolish worship 
of this universe and the divinities which filled it. Whatever 
name it invokes is always that great unconscious Nature which 
presses from every side, under the weight of its energies, all 
that does not learn to subdue it. Purifying waters were no 
good, nor the bloody sprinklings after the sacrifices of bulls 
and goats, the hecatombs and blood of bulls for the Great 
Goddess, and the goats of Attis. Initiation into the mysteries 
nought availed, whatever their name or their intention; 
neither those of the Cabiri, of Bacchus and Ceres, of Osiris 
and Mithras, at Philae, at Eleusis, at Samothrace, Lesbos, Crete 
or Rome. When the initiated returned from these secret 
ceremonies, when, led by the priest, their head bound by a 
coronet of myrtle, and purified by bestial expiation, they had 
put on the Bacchic fawn-skin; when they had gazed behind 
the veil of the temples and the mythologies; they had seen 
and felt nothing throughout those luminous nights. They had 
read priestly riddles, they had looked into the sacred 
coffer, they knew that the gods were only nature and 
her forces, and that human destiny also was only that infinite 
and impersonal nature in whose bosom man had nothing to 
hope for but absorption or eternal migrations. No tendency 
towards good could be the issue of those preparatory fasts 
ending in orgies, from those sacred dances which always 
aimed at the cynical representation, and at the glorification of 
the male and female principles of living nature, or else at the 
practices of sensual magic which declared that it appropriated 
the very forces of creation, and, as in our own time among 
Mussulmans and Buddhists, confounded the nervous excite¬ 
ment of epilepsy with divine ecstasy 

All the trinities, of India and Assyria, of Egypt and 
Phoenicia, of Greece and Rome; Brahma, Vishnu and Siva; 


8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Ahura-Mazda, Mithra, and Crraoska; Atum, Ra, and Kheper; 
Ammon, Bel, and Ao; Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; all those 
divine couples, Brahma and Maya, Kem and Mout, Baal and 
Astarte, Baal-Ammon and Tanith, Isis and Osiris, Moloch and 
Mylitta, Dionysos and Aphrodite, Cupid and Psyche; all the 
genii, demons and heroes; all the Orphic mysteries, those of 
Bacchus and Ceres, Isis and Mithra, the Thesmophoria of 
Athens, the orgies of Samothrace, the Eleusinian and Baccha¬ 
nalian mysteries; all these divinities and hierarchies were 
just the same: we find the same fancy in their theogonic and 
cosmogonic speculations, the same cruelty and the same 
corruption in their rites. 

A strange heaven weighed upon the race of men, pouring 
down floods of darkness and death; and mankind, timid and 
mad, eagerly worshipped it. No cry of revolt arose from that 
ignorant mass in their oppression and degradation ; slavery and 
vice were its pleasures; gods were multiplied without end ; 
rites, like so many weighty chains, strangled souls, and men 
embraced their fetters. These religions bade men die and 
kill their children, and were obeyed; bade women sacrifice 
their chastity, and the sacrifice was made. 

Poets sung of gods and recited their fabulous epics; 
philosophers sought for a sense hidden under the myths, and 
made a pact with revolting worships; politics forged an 
instrument of government out of polytheism and its apo¬ 
theosis, while the vicious crowd acquiesced. Led astray by the 
priests, the people rushed to festivals, consulted the oracles, 
crouched before idols, and lashed on by their instincts, now 
terrified and now excited by the gods, rushed panting to their 
death. 


For thirty centuries paganism had reigned over the human 
race, and the terrible yoke evermore grew heavier. It was 
as burdensome under Augustus, the high priest, at Rome, as 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 
From the Painting by Murillo , in the Louvre . 
























f 





























THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


9 


under the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Assyria; its 
deadly character only grew worse with time. 

Pantheism grew more refined; the number of deities 
endlessly increased. Rome, latest comer among pagan 
nations, surpassed the others in the fecundity with which 
she peopled her Pantheon; she counted her gods by thou¬ 
sands. The symbols were veiled in the recesses of the 
temples, and reserved for the initiated ; but they were still 
obscene. Mythologies continued to inspire the genius of 
sculptors and poets; the gods grouped themselves round 
Jupiter as their sovereign. In seeking for unity in this ever- 
increasing crowd of divinities, philosophers could only find it 
in Fate, which, like the symbolical serpent, embraced in an 
inflexible circle all nature, man, the universe, and the gods. 

Superstition increased, astrologers interpreted the future, 
and the seers of Chaldaea and the East took possession of 
Rome. The priests became a dominant caste, of which 
the deified emperor was the chief. The Saturnalia and 
Bacchanalia grew more and more indecent ; the very security 
of the state demanded that they should be abolished ; if the 
cruelty of the rites seemed to yield to gentler manners, if 
human blood ran in floods less abundant, corruption, on 
the other hand, became worse. It is a sad history of a tide 
oscillating between the two accursed shores, murder and lust, 
tossing about the whole human race at the pleasure of 
Melkart and Mylitta. 

Yet, such is the tendency of the human soul towards truth 
and right, that even in this deluge some truths and virtues 
rose to the surface. Religious feeling, however warped, still 
existed ; in the idea of God, though disfigured and travestied, 
remained some rays of glory ; conscience could not be 
separated from thought, nor escape from the action of that 
mysterious, ever-present force, in whose bosom the whole 
universe is born, at once the terror and attraction of every 
creature. The moral law resisted in certain points all attack ; 


10 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the sanctity of oaths, justice, humanity, was the of rule many 
wills and the honour of many lives. In this widespread 
perdition God preserved his elect; he had his chosen children 
who waited on him ; sincere souls and wounded hearts, who 
called on the Unknown God. Evil is only an accident ; it 
cannot destroy the essential part; now the essential part of 
human nature, always and everywhere, is to hunger after God. 

But these elect are like pearls on a dung-heap: God alone 
knew them. The divine eye of Jesus saw from afar his 
future elect, these heathen of good faith of whom he thought 
in those profound words, “ Many shall come from the east and 
west, and shall sit down as guests at the same table with 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the sons of the kingdom 
shall be cast into outer darkness, far from the light and the 
feast.” 1 

What then is the place of paganism in the history of 
mankind ? Political power, concentrated in Rome, had 
effected the material unity of nations, but it is not so clear 
that the religious force, expressed in a disorderly way in the 
polytheistic and idolatrous worships, produced anything ; it is 
not so clear whether it were a movement forward or backward, 
a progress or a decline. 

An arbitrary and preconceived science of the history of 
religions has wished to see in it a regular phase, holding the 
mean between fetishism and monotheism : fetishism, which 
according to its theory, is the starting-point, and monotheism, 
which is the goal of religious evolution. I do not think that 
it is possible to distinguish, from a religious standpoint, be¬ 
tween fetishism or animism, and the polytheistic worships; at 
bottom they all have the same character, since all adore and 
deify nature. Fetishism is not a religion, but one of the 
constant and essential elements of the pagan religions : every 
pagan, Greek and Roman, as well as the negro of Timbuctoo, 

1 Matt. viii. 12, and parallel passages. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


II 


has his fetishes. The Palladium of Troy; the thirty square 
stones, which, in the time of Pausanias, surrounded the statue 
of Hermes, and were adored by the people, who gave to each the 
name of a god; the spear of Mars at Rome; and all the 
amulets among all the nations infected by the venom of 
Paganism, even when monotheistic, were only visible and 
wonder-working objects in which was a god or a divine 
being, or in which they were incarnate. 

Mankind does not develop in the same manner as unin¬ 
telligent nature, according to the law of continuity and under 
the impulse of God, whom it always obeys; it has its aberra¬ 
tions and its crises, inseparable from freedom. If paganism 
were a law of our specific evolution, it would also be a law of 
our individual evolution, for the individual, in his develop¬ 
ment, reproduces the laws of the species; and therefore, after 
the example of mankind, man would pass through fetishism 
and paganism ; every individual would begin by having his 
manitou, and would then rise to the phase wherein nature is 
deified and gods are multiplied ; but experience shows how 
false is such a conclusion. 

Paganism is not a normal stage of humanity, but a malady, 
a mortal crisis, a vice of youth, a contagion which, through long 
ages, has infected the whole race, except only the little 
Semitic tribe of Abraham. All nations attacked by it have 
perished ; all the forms in which it clothed itself are exhausted ; 
the past of humanity is only an immense necropolis in which 
Paganism has buried the nations and is now itself buried, with 
its victims and its troop of false gods. Grave questions, as 
mysterious in the individual as in mankind at large, present 
themselves to us. Why has man been thus intoxicated with 
nature ? Why has his imagination usurped the place of the 
rights of reason and primitive revelation ? Why, instead of dis¬ 
cerning the infinite Being, has he misunderstood him ? Why has 
he been a slave when he should have been master, and revolted 
against what he should adore? Why has evil prevailed? 

8 


12 


JESUS CHRIST. 

Whatever solution we give of these questions, one fact is clear ; 
the world in the grasp of paganism was sick unto death ; he 
who could heal it by restoring it to monotheism and the life- 
giving idea of God, and give it sway over nature and self, he 
and he alone, was its true saviour. Jesus has freed it, and 
thereby has conquered for himself a place without peer 
among the greatest men. Nothing human could break the 
doom which kept humanity captive and degraded, “ a people 
walking in darkness,” sinking and losing itself. Let those who 
doubt the fact look onward only two centuries ; the idols were 
broken, the temples decayed, faith in the gods was dead, 
poets and philosophers, politicians and priests, were in league 
together, and these sages could do but little to avert the 
victory of Christ. They had hardly a word of blame for these 
degrading worships, scarce a protest against that mythological 
fury which hid the face of God by its multiplied symbols; 
desperately pagan in their syncretic philosophy, their 
Pythagoreanism, their Platonism, their Euhemerism, they 
endeavoured to seek the hidden meaning of legends and 
symbols, and, crouching under their old pantheism, their 
old fatalism, their old materialism, and their idle magic, 
they set themselves in vain against the Light which shone, 
in spite of them, to enlighten and save lost humanity. 

Beyond the political and religious forces is that of reason. 
The first, in the social and practical order, tends towards 
civilisation and the material union of men : the second, 
resting on the sentiment of the divine and on tradition, seeks 
to unite man with God ; the third, in the inward and personal 
order, is only the effort of an intelligent and free being to 
explain the principle of things and regulate life; it has its 
expression in science and philosophy. Every nation, race 
and civilisation, when arrived at a certain degree of develop¬ 
ment, have a philosophy, a policy, and a hierarchical religioa 

At the time that Rome was the mistress of the world, and 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


13 


Paganism bore rule over mankind, Greek philosophy had the 
sole authority. In the vast evolution of man, every nation 
has received from God a special destiny answering to its 
genius. The East is the warm and sunny cradle of religion ; 
Rome was eminently practical in the knowledge of law and 
government, policy and action. Artistic and enquiring Greece 
had a genius for form, beauty, and philosophy: thus, all 
worship comes from the East, as the science of law from 
Rome, and philosophy from Greece. 

Philosophy, which in human life, the movement of 
opinions and the direction of minds, plays so large a part, 
took its birth in the Hellenic world six or seven centuries 
before Jesus Christ, on the shores and islands of the 
Mediterranean, at Miletus, Smyrna, Ephesus, Lampsacus, 
Clazomenae, Scyros, Apollonia, Samos, Agrigentum, Elea, 
Abdera, Athens, Cyrene, Stagira, Elis, and Cytirium, each of 
which claimed the honour of having given birth to one 
of the masters of the great philosophic schools. 

All systems which the reason of man can construct in his 
search after truth, a search so restless, so laborious and so 
often in vain, whether these systems be called dogmatism 
and scepticism, materialism and idealism, sensualism and 
spiritualism, pantheism and dualism, naturalism and fatalism, 
optimism and pessimism, even nihilism, all have found their 
definite expression in Greece. To philosophy, as to literature, 
poetry, and art, Greece has given its typical forms and has 
realised the ideal. It is possible to equal, but not to 
surpass the masters. Empedocles and Pythagoras, Socrates, 
Aristotle and Plato, Zeno and Epicurus, in their way, are 
as perfect as Praxiteles and Phidias, Homer or Pindar, 
Euripides or Sophocles, ZEschylus or Demosthenes. Whoever, 
after that creative age wills to become a philosopher, that is, 
wills to solve the problem of the value of reason, of the 
principle of things, the destiny of man and the conduct oi 


14 


JESUS CHRIST. 


life, must acknowledge a forerunner and a master among the 
Ionians or Pythagoreans, the Eleatic philosophers or the 
Sophists, in the Porch or Academy. In this active period, so 
excited, but so fruitful, system succeeded to system, and 
school overthrew school ; the dynamism of Thales and 
Pherecydes gave place to the atomism of Democritus; the 
positivism of Parmenides to the abstractions of Pythagoras ; 
dogmatism was outflanked by the nihilism of the sophists, 
like Protagoras and Gorgias; Socrates routed the sophists 
and prepared the reign of Plato and Aristotle; and lastly, 
Pyrrho was born again, and Epicurus and Zeno strove for 
the mastery over consciences. There was not a single error 
which had not its apostles, and not a reasonable truth which 
had not its disciples ; but in spite of these efforts reason 
always showed itself weak and hesitating before certain 
essential truths: pure theism, the creation of matter, im¬ 
mortality and future life. 

The Greek intellect only escaped from pantheism to end 
in the dualism of intelligence and eternal matter; it was 
never able to demonstrate that the human race did not finally 
acquiesce in annihilation, nor to offer to conscience an exterior 
and positive sanction. Faith alone teaches effectively these 
necessary truths, and they have become the heritage of all 
only by the testimony of Jesus. Reason demonstrates them 
when the voice of God declares them ; reason had a presenti¬ 
ment of them, but discovers them slowly, and with difficulty, 
and cannot give them a perfect enunciation. 

In passing over to Rome, Greek philosophy, like all other 
things, experienced the influence of new surroundings. The 
positive genius of the conquering race, daughter of Ceres and 
Mars, agricultural and warlike, lost no time in vain specula¬ 
tion, but was content to reproduce in eloquent language and 
in immortal poems the greater systems of its masters. 
Cicero, Lucretius, Varro, Horace and Virgil invented nothing, 
but reproduced Greek teaching. More concerned with morals 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


15 


than dogma, in living and acting than dreaming and thinking, 
they applied themselves to the problem most important in 
life: Wherein consists happiness and the chief good ? What 
road leads thither ? Such questions as these could not be put 
in the temples, in the celebration of the mysteries, and the 
esoteric science of the sacerdotal castes. Paganism could 
only lull the souls of the crowd with the dreams of a fancied 
immortality, and bow them before the gods, whose legends 
and scandalous emblems stimulated and deified every vice. 
The philosophic conscience was higher than the religious 
conscience of paganism. 

It is at least honourable to reason that it asked these great 
questions neglected by worship, and often spoke to man in 
the lofty language of duty and virtue. It is far from finding 
a solution, it mingles many and grave errors with its sublime 
precepts ; but it would be unj'ust to misunderstand the efforts 
it made and the success which more than once rewarded its 
perseverance. In the time of Augustus moral philosophers 
were few; Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius came 
later; those intellects, which, among all the heathen, best 
taught duty and seemed to wait for the first rays of Gospel 
light, in order to expand. But if writers were few, men who 
professed moral and practical philosophy were many; deed 
is better than word ; contemporary authors testify that 
philosophy was never more active, and was entering upon its 
period of proselytism and organization. Greece had the glory 
of creating philosophy, Rome that ol organizing it, and 
applying it to the amelioration of life. 

The genius of Rome explains its practical tendency, and 
explains why in that age philosophy assumed a new 
character ; why, usually so personal and intimate, confined to 
the schools, and reserved to the disciples and the elect, it 
now made an impression on the crowd. It is not enough to 
take into account its conquering, apostolic, and almost 


16 


JESUS CHRIST. 


religious course; there is complete evidence of the decay of 
heathen religions and the moral inadequacy of their priests. 
The priests, indeed, were dumb; they had no answer for the 
great problem of life, no balm for the wounds of sufferers; 
they lived satisfied with the sterile observances of their 
pompous rites, playing upon the superstition of the people, 
scarcely concealing their scepticism in regard to their pretended 
mysteries. The philosophers had taken the place of pontiffs, 
and philosophy attempted to play the part abandoned by 
religion. The philosophers, like the priests, were separate from 
the crowd by their dress ; they were seen in the streets cloaked, 
with long beards, and staves in their hands. A poet wrote 
of them: “It seems, that they hold their head above vices 
and the places where men congregate.” 1 They had daily con¬ 
versations and familiar sermons ; they taught morals and gave 
consolation ; exhorted and rebuked. Important towns had 
their doctors of philosophy, handsomely paid out of public 
funds, and they were attached as chaplains to the houses of 
the great; those whom misfortune overtook called in the con¬ 
solation of a philosopher . 2 Augustus had such a philosopher, 
Areus, to whom he sent Livia in order to be consoled for the 
death of Drusus. 

They made proselytes as believers did. The philosopher 
Stertinius met, on a river’s bank, an unfortunate man, about to 
drown himself in despair ; he stopped him, and, by his ex¬ 
hortations, gave him a new desire for life. The convert allowed 
his beard to grow; and, having thus become a philosopher, 
followed the master who had saved him. They had their 
ceremonials, their superstitions, and their bigotry. Was a 
man under the influence of some dangerous desire? There 
were words which could help against this evil, and in a great 
measure deliver him from it. Was the desire of praise a 

1 Credibile est illos pariter vitiisque locisque 

Aldus humanis exeruisse caput.”—Ov. Fasti i. 299. 

2 Seneca, De Consolat ., ad Marciam, cap. iv. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


1 7 

temptation? Such and such a salutary practice, such and such 
a book read thrice over, according to due rites, would accomplish 
a cure. 

In regard to the doctrine and philosophy of these sages, 
we shall find that there were two great schools; that of 
Epicurus and that of Zeno. Both sought for happiness : one 
in enjoyment, the other in virtue; one in the “ feeling,” the 
other in the “will.” We may put out of sight that scepticism 
which, on the decline of every civilisation, draws after it the 
disappointed ; such as the Cynics who, like Diogenes, took as 
their law nature with all its instincts, and practised, while they 
despised, all the vices they could not cure. We may except 
also the new Academy whose few disciples perpetuated the 
traditions of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. 

(/ The Epicureans said: The whole science of happiness 
consists in procuring pleasant sensations; all excess implies 
or causes pain; we must learn to be moderate in everything, 
even in pleasure. For the true disciples of Epicurus, virtue it¬ 
self or moderation is not the end of man, but the perfect means 
of enjoyment; all ends in the “ Ego” and in the satisfaction of 
the “ Ego.” It is the very refinement of corruption and egoism. 

The Stoics appealed to the nobler side of man : Thou art 
free, they said to him, thou art thine own master. Since thy 
will is thine and can learn to master itself, happiness lies in 
self-mastery. Pain does not exist; persecution and death 
are naught; no one can take thee away from thyself; that 
is enough for the wise man. So these Stoics, proud and 
untameable, went out into a rotten world, defying all oppression, 
and spitting out their very tongues at the tyrants who were 
unable to subdue them. In the light of the Gospel it is plain 
that such a doctrine, with its haughty airs, is but a veil for 
vanity, illusion, and weakness ; but it must be recognised that 
such pride makes its way, and it is pleasant to discover these 
wills of iron, upright and inflexible, in the midst of the fright¬ 
ful despotism of Rome and of pagan corruption. 


8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The school of Epicurus never produced a hero, either in 
Greece or Rome. The heroism which so imperiously com¬ 
mands the personal sacrifice of the individual, at times even 
unto death, could not flourish in those consciences for whom 
enjoyment was the sovereign good. They corrupted, more¬ 
over, one of its living wells, in that they did not share in the 
stir of public affairs, according to the precept of the Master: 
“ Live in secret.” They did not even understand public life, as 
is witnessed by that strange judgment of the Epicurean sect 
on Pyrrhus: “ What had he to do with marching an 

army through the Peloponnesus, and why did he not rather 
keep himself ensconced at home, with a garland on his head, 
intent on making good cheer and enjoying himself? ” l 

The school of Zeno set a man in arms against himself, 
made him disregard pain, and, in despite of everything, keep 
his independence and his liberty, thus sowing in consciences 
the germ of masculine virtue. The greatest men of action in 
the old world, Cato, Brutus, and Marcus Aurelius, were 
Stoics. 

If we examine the Epicureans and Stoics we shall find 
among them some fine thoughts: concerning moderation 
among the former, and power among the latter. It would be 
easy to compose from them an edifying manual of almost all 
virtues, private and public : a pure conscience, temperance, 
gentleness, justice, prudence, the contempt of riches, calmness, 
peace, inflexibility of character, friendship, devotion and kind¬ 
ness. All these precepts have been formulated in immortal 
language ; we may call them diamonds of the finest water, cut 
and set; the jewels of philosophy. 

If fine words could save souls, the school of Epicurus or 
that of Zeno might have cured mankind ; but talking is one 
thing, acting another; philosophy has often excelled in the 
one and failed in the other. This weakness, a vice common 

1 Plutarch, De Vir. illustr Pyrrhus. 






THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN. 


From the Painting by Raphael. 

























THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


19 


to the two rival sects, explains the barrenness of their 
proselytism. Epicureans and Stoics are after all at one in the 
worship of themselves; the “Ego” is the end of both, that 
satisfaction of the “ Ego,” the sum of their teaching. But the 
“ Ego ” in this world, whether we place it with Epicurus in 
“sense,” or with Zeno in “will,” is a prey to sorrow. How 
shall sorrow be conquered, since it cannot be suppressed? 
There is but one resource, voluptuous indifference, and, in fact, 
both find, the one by “ tension,” rovoc, the other by “ relaxa¬ 
tion,” avEcng, their final refuge. A boundless sorrow underlies 
all souls seeking after philosophic wisdom, they feel it 
inexorable under the indifference in which they are wrapped, 
they succumb to its pressure, and rest alone with their “ Ego,” 
which, after all, escapes them. If we listen to them, man 
belongs to himself, and is his own master; his life is in his own 
hands, and, if he choose to put an end to it, he has no account to 
render to anybody; suicide is a right, perhaps even a duty, 
and may, in any case, be a necessity. Man has one advantage 
over the gods, said the Stoics, he can die. The saint of the 
sect, Cato, committed suicide. Nothing in them was divine ; 
the god whom they called Nature was worth no more than 
the god of the religions and the mythologies. It was not the 
living and personal God, but Fate, blind, mute, and inaccessible; 
man must submit to it, man crushed and conquered, over¬ 
thrown and desperate. 

Men have tried to make a Christianity out of that; as if 
religion could issue from philosophy, the Gospel beatitudes 
from those of Epicurus or Zeno, the law of sacrifice from the 
law of selfishness, God the Father from Fate, force from 
weakness, inexhaustible and divine hope from indifference and 
despair ; as if Jesus, who brought goodness, and light, and life, 
were only a philosopher, a descendant of some Roman sect. 
No ; in spite of philosophy and its pearls, the world before him 
was nothing but a dung-heap ; and he, the great sower, threw 
his words upon it as a leaven to transform the whok 


20 


JESUS CHRIST. 


whose ineradicable vitality always works upon the persistent 
paganism of poor mankind. 


It was necessary that Jesus Christ should be born from 
among the Jewish people. It is the humblest of all nations ; 
but it has given birth to Christ, and, for this very reason, it 
takes place, in spite of its littleness, beside and above the 
Roman empire, the religions of heathendom, Hellenic culture, 
and the greatest powers of history. Other nations seem given 
over to the initiative of their own intellects, and the mercy of 
their vices ; Israel increased under the high guardianship 
of God. Apart from all, and kept by him, it appeared in the 
midst of the human floods as the ark which held the salvation 
of the future. The development of the- kingdom of man, 
with its religious transformations, cannot be explained without 
Judaism. Jehovah, its God, has become the God of mankind, 
and its Messiah, always expected, but finally misunderstood 
by it, has become the Saviour and the Regenerator of the 
world. 

Nothing is more wonderful than this little Semitic tribe 
starting, under divine command, from the plains of Chaldaea, 
with its faith in One God, with the hope of becoming a people 
as the stars in number, and of seeing all the families of the 
earth blessed in Abraham, its chief . 1 It camped under tents 
in Canaan, and there raised altars to Jehovah, whose name it 
invoked ; emigrated into Egypt, to the land of Goshen, there 
to toil and increase. The severe hospitality of the Pharaohs 
soon changed it into slavery ; under the inspiration of Moses it 
broke the yoke which crushed it, retired into the desert, and 
became once more nomadic and pastoral. Far from all civili¬ 
zation, it received on Sinai the Law which was to separate 
it from the heathen world. By patience, courage, and faith it 
conquered the land which God had promised to it, and made 


1 Gen. xii. 3. 


21 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

itself into a little independent kingdom, until the day when, 
yielding to its fate, it was cast, like a handful of dust, abroad 
among the nations. At the time of this hasty sketch Israel 
had reached the last age of national life, and was about to lose 
political independence for ever. 

After having resisted the most terrible intestine divisions, 
exile, and servitude among strangers such as the Persians and 
the Greeks; after having been able to reconquer its former 
autonomy by a handful of brave men, after four centuries of 
subjugation, Judaea was at this time governed by Herod the 
Idumaean, a creature of Caesar and the senate. It was now 
only dependent on the empire in which it was about to be 
absorbed. Then, as in our own time, small states could not 
hope for a morrow. 

K Except the Sadducees, strict conservatives and courtiers 
of an anti-national power, lovers of peace above all, and 
sacrificing everything for peace, even to the independence of 
their country, all the doctors, the scribes, and the mass of the 
people, understood the crisis of their nation ; they saw the 
abyss, but they did not, and could not, believe in the 
catastrophe. 

This vigorous race willed with such firmness to live and to 
become a great state that neither reverses, disasters, nor time, 
dissipated its hope or scattered its patriotic illusions.* It was 
the elect people, and had the promises of God : the throne of 
David was indestructible, the blood of the Maccabees was 
incorrupt ; the darker grew the horizon, the brighter became 
the ideal image of the Messiah ; misfortune did not subdue 
but exasperated them. As they approached the gulf in which 
it was to disappear, their faith in an ultimate triumph increased. 
The majority of the doctors had not ceased, by a false inter¬ 
pretation of the Scriptures, and by the apocalyptical writings 
of the last days, that of Enoch above all, to entertain the most 
disastrous speculations on the future and the political 
grandeur of Israel. They materialized prophecies relative to 


22 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the Messianic era and the Messenger of God who should 
bring it about ; they were determined to see in that era only 
the re-establishment of their ruined kingdom ; they dreamt of 
a restoration which should give them universal empire, and 
made for themselves a fantastic Messiah, a sort of divine Caesar, 
stretching over the conquered world a more glorious sceptre 
than that of Solomon. 

Fidelity to their religious law found, it is true, in this error, 
a strong support, for this fidelity, according to them, was the 
very condition of the realization of their wild hopes. God is 
true, said the masters; his word can neither deceive nor fail : 
“ Keep his law, and he will accomplish those promises which 
our sins and our apostasies hold in suspense.” 


The greatest peril for a nation, is to misunderstand its 
destiny; the failure of the national conscience in the Jewish 
people was the first cause of their ruin. Its destiny, 
according to its race and religion, was one thing; according to 
its political form, another. We must not confound Judaism 
with the Jewish nation: the one is a race and a religion, the 
other a political form, a mode of being in which race and 
religion may vary. Judaism still subsists after five thousand 
years. The Jewish nation lived only for a few hundred years, 
from Saul to the Babylonian exile, from about the year 1000 
to 588. Exiled for seventy years, enslaved for two centuries 
under the kings of Persia, a century and a half under the 
Graeco-Macedonian dominion, it regained free government 
under the princes of the Maccabaean family, but that revival 
lasted for only a century. In the year 63 Pompey took 
possession of Jerusalem; and the Romans were careful to give 
an Idumaean king to Judaea ; but they only watched their 
opportunity to make it into a mere province of the empire, and 
in order to destroy more surely all desire for independence in 
this stubborn people, stiff-necked as a bar of iron, according to 


23 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the strong expression of one of the prophets, 1 they soon 
destroyed for ever the capital and temple. 

National existence is but a relatively short phase in the 
fifty centuries of the history of Israel; and has had no other end 
than to give a firmer consistency to the race, and to permit 
a completer organization of the religion. This result obtained 
Israel might disappear as a kingdom ; but, even when dis¬ 
persed, it was to live as a race and a Church. Among the 
other peoples of antiquity, the state and the religion mingled 
together, lived, developed, and died together ; when the 
nationality fell, the gods departed. But in this nation all 
is strange ; nationality might perish, the race and the religion 
would still grow greater, and, far from overthrowing their 
providential destiny, destruction only aided it. 

The office of Judaism was not to conquer the world : all in 
it is religious and sacerdotal. It was not distinguished from 
its surroundings by arts or arms, by numbers, or science; its 
glory is in a dogma, a moral law, a hope. God raised it from 
the midst of the heathen to be his witness, the apostle of his 
unity, the herald of his justice and mercy, the guardian of his 
decalogue, the focus of Messianic hopes. Through the whole 
world the Jew was to carry the book which contained his 
divine treasures, to publish the dogma, to practise the law, to 
declare the hope ; he was to build synagogues as a temple for 
his book ; he was to sit down before the sacred chest wherein 
was deposited the holy roll; to read it, study it, and comment 
on it. 

Theological science multiplied its centres; it flourished as 
well at Babylon, amid Persian surroundings, as at Alexan¬ 
dria, in the midst of Greek philosophy, and at Jerusalem, 
where the doctors spoke their mother-tongue and preserved 
unmixed the tradition of their ancestors. While the heathen 


1 “ Durus es tu, et nervus ferreus cervix tua.”—Isa. xlviii. 4. 


24 


JESUS CHRIST. 


ran in crowds to their idols, the Jew remained faithful to the 
only God who governed the world, to the law which ruled 
over conscience, and to its unquenchable hope in the hero 
foretold by his prophets. 

Thus, at the very time when the nation drew to its end, 
the race was extended; under the shock of various events, 
brought about by Providence, such as war and colonization, 
exile and voluntary emigration, and even the favour of its 
conquerors, it was dispersed to the four corners of the world. 
Jewish colonies were everywhere, in the south of Asia and 
Arabia, on all the shores of Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Europe, 
Greece, and Italy. This extension, which began from the 
sixth century before Jesus Christ, by the “ carrying away,” and 
which had for its theatre the empire of Assyria, was continued 
under Alexander in the immense empire of Macedonia; was 
developed under his successors in Syria under the Seleucidae, 
and in Egypt under the Lagidae; it received from Rome a 
new impulse : there was not henceforward an important town 
which did not possess a Jewish colony and community. 

" It would be difficult,” said Strabo, “ to find a place, in all 
the earth, which had not received the Jews and where they 
were not strongly established.” They were on all the shores 
of the Mediterranean, at the mouths of all the great rivers: 
the Nile, Danube, Tigris and Euphrates, and, no doubt, the 
Ganges, for in their migrations eastward they went beyond the 
provinces of upper Asia and reached China and the Petchili. 
What they had taken they never let go, and they rooted them¬ 
selves firmly. Babylon remained the centre during the period 
of Assyrian exile, Alexandria during that of Greek coloniza¬ 
tion, while Jerusalem was the burning centre which kept alive 
the hope of national recovery. 

By establishing themselves in the midst of strange and 
heathen peoples, the Jew was not incorporated with them ; he 
lived alone, preserved the free exercise of his worship, and 
often kept a sort of religious nationality; he paid tribute, but 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


25 

was exempt from military service j he had his own rulers for 
judges and governors. A few took part in the government 
of the towns, armies or states; but these were exceptions: 
the Jews confined themselves more willingly to traffic, 
commerce and finance. Grouped in quarters apart, they built 
synagogues and proseuchae at the entrances of towns, near 
rivers, where they could perform their ablutions. Far from 
objecting to this isolation, the Romans, like the Lagidae, 
favoured it. Augustus ordered the governors of Asia not to 
apply to the Jews the severe laws of the empire in regard to 
assemblies and societies. They were allowed to gather the 
tax for the Temple and to send it to Jerusalem, as a voluntary 
contribution. They had the right of judging their own 
causes before a Jewish rather than a Roman tribunal. As for 
military service, which was for a time exacted under Tiberius, 
there was no longer any question of that for them in the west. 

This large tolerance greatly favoured the development and 
increase of this race, of which it is impossible to deny the 
practical intelligence, firmness, subtleness, sobriety and, as 
Tacitus declares, the love of giving life and the contempt of 
death. 1 None has ever better known the art of gathering riches, 
for none has ever shown a more boundless common sense, an 
austerer frugality, more indefatigable work, and a more tena¬ 
cious will. The preoccupations of money-getting, which, in 
other races, stifle all higher ideas, and defile the source of what 
is divine, have not succeeded in subduing or destroying the 
religion of this nation. The tradesmen and merchants, even 
from the lowest packman and chafferers up to the bankers and 
the great brokers, remained members of the community of 
which the centre was at Jerusalem, and the radii wherever 
a synagogue was built; they felt themselves children of 
Abraham, and bore this title in the world of the “ goym,” with 
an aristocratic pride, as the Moslim bear their titles amid 

1 “ Huic generandi amor et moriendi contemptus.”—Tacit., Hist v. 5. 


26 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Christians and infidels, the “ Giaour; ” they were inviolably 
attached to the law and the book which contained it; they 
rested on the sabbath day, celebrated their rites far away 
from pagan eye, in their proseuchae, and the shade of their 
sacred gardens. They would not sit at meat with the people 
of the country; through pride of blood they only inter¬ 
married with the women of their own race. They were 
wont every year, above all, at the great feasts, Pentecost, 
the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of Dedication, to visit 
Palestine and the holy city; all were obliged at one time 
in their lives to sacrifice in person to Jehovah in the only 
place which he had chosen, and they sent a tribute, called 
first-fruits or offerings, to enrich the treasury of the Temple 
and provide for the needs of their necessitous brethren. 

Other races are lost in the surroundings into which they 
emigrate : the Jew has but one country, the holy place of Zion : 
the rest of the world is only a strange land for him ; he goes 
and comes, passes or stays, but without attaching himself by 
too close ties to the profane soil which he disdains ; and if he 
accepted or bought the title of Roman citizen, it was to give 
a still higher guarantee of his independence as a Jew. The 
Temple was his sacred Palladium, and holy Salem the star 
towards which he turned in prayer, as the Mussulman towards 
Mecca and the Kaaba. 

Thus, by his book and synagogues, his worship and 
manners, his exclusiveness and indestructible attachment to 
his absent country, his fidelity to the traditions of the elders, 
his brotherhood and powerful organization, through all the 
scorn of which he was the object and the persecutions which 
assailed him, in spite of surroundings which would have led 
away and corrupted every other race of less keen a temper, 
the Jews of the dispersion remained a religious community, 
a Church : defying paganism, despising the gods, resisting 
Greek culture and Roman manners, and, always undisturbed 
in its faith, persisting in the belief that they were destined to 
subdue the world, as soon as Messiah came. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


27 


Though he disdained the heathen world, and was more 
en g a g e d in defending himself against its influence than in 
converting it to his own worship, the Jew still exercised in 
it a true proselytism. He applied himself to this with zeal, 
perseverance, and ability. We find in his mission all the 
qualities and faults of his race: suppleness and the arts of 
insinuation, craft and cupidity, pride of blood and intrigue. 1 
By means of slaves and freedmen, he insinuated himself into 
the houses of the greatest personages, and even into the 
palace of the Caesars; in his trading vessels he went through 
all the seas and the Mediterranean bays ; by the pedlar, who, 
with his pack, traversed the streets and the suburban paths, 
he acted upon the lower classes. “ Our laws,” said Philo, not 
without some exaggeration, “draw all men to them, barbarians, 
strangers and Greeks, those who inhabit the continents, and 
those who inhabit the isles in the east, and the west, and in 
Europe.” 

Women were converted more easily than men ; 2 all those 
of Damascus, if we may believe Josephus, 3 had embraced 
Judaism. Men, and principally foreigners, yielded also, 
drawn by the advantages of a conversion which entailed 
the right of citizenship, the exemption from military service, 
and the right of marriage with the women of the country. 
The need of a positive faith and an elevated doctrine must 
have drawn some of those whom paganism had disgusted 
and scepticism discouraged. 

There were two classes of converts : the “ proselytes of the 
gates,” and those of “justice.” The first, a kind of inter¬ 
mediary class between Gentiles and Jews, still unclean, but 
contact with whom did not defile the true son of Abraham, 
were only bound to worship the true God and to keep the 

1 Matt, xxiii. 15. 

2 Acts xiii. 50; xvi. 14. 

3 Antiq. xviii. 3-5. 

9 


28 


JESUS CHRIST. 


seven precepts of Noah. 1 The second became true Jews by 
circumcision, by a baptism of immersion and sacrifice; sub¬ 
mitting to all the customs and the laws of the divine 
covenant, they were solemnly admitted into the theocracy ; 
and were called the Perfect. 

In spite of their zeal for proselytism the Jews did not 
succeed in subduing the Gentile world; Gentile and Jew 
represented two hostile forces, each antagonistic to the other. 

The devout and unyielding Pharisee held the Gentile in 
horror, while the Gentile despised the Jew; the one shook 
the dust from his feet as though it stained him to tread 
on heathen ground ; the other heaped ridicule and scorn on 
the circumcised. Cicero could only see in Judaism “a people 
born for slavery; ” Seneca regarded it as “ a miserable and 
criminal nation ; ” more bitter still, Tacitus speaks of its “ foolish, 
and despicable worship,” and calls it “ the dregs of slavery.” 
Between Israel and paganism there was more than a barrier, a 
gaping and impassable gulf. For more than six centuries 
scattered through all the nations, it had never brought one to 
its own faith ; it imposed it simply upon two neighbouring 
tribes ; the Idumaeans under John Hyrcanus, 2 and the Ituraeans 
under Aristobulus. 3 Its God was more terrible than attrac¬ 
tive, and the law, with its scrupulous rites, was rather a yoke 
than a support; it enchained and overwhelmed the conscience, 
but did not sustain it. 

This religious race was evidently better endowed for 
defence than for attack and conquest; it had greater cohesion 
than expansion, more stiffness than suppleness; it was more 
resisting than penetrating; it had power, but no sympathy; 
like a rock, it had hardness, but no sovereign energy to 
assimilate and transform its surroundings; its barrenness 

1 Exod. xii. 19; Lev. xvii. 12, xxiv. 16; Ezek. xiv. 16. 

3 Aniiq. xiii. 9, 7 ; xv. 7, 9. 

8 Ibid. xiii. 11,3; 15,4. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 29 

as a conquering power is only equalled by its wonderful 
indestructibility. 

Nothing in history better proves the work of God than this 
little people, assailed on all sides by universal heathendom, 
and never subdued by it. Amid all its wanderings across the 
most diverse civilisations, it occasionally borrowed from 
Chaldaean and Assyrian traditions, from the doctrines and 
worship of Egypt, from Persian theology, and Greek 
philosophy, but it purified them all and itself remained the 
same. 

When all was Pantheistic, it was not so; all idolatrous, it 
stood firm ; when all worshipped nature, it worshipped not; 
when all were fetishists, it yielded not. Around it, chiefs and 
kings were made into divinities; it recognised in Abraham 
only a father, and carefully concealed the tomb of Moses, who 
remained simply its supreme lawgiver. It slew the prophets ; 
but their words remained in force, and the voice of the dead 
became only more eloquent to those who had misunderstood 
them. It resisted all: idolatry, philosophy, Greek culture, 
persecution, and time, more terrible than all; it resisted even 
its own Messiah. It may be said of the Jew that if he were 
neither a convert or pervert, and if he never changed anything, 
he at least preserved everything. This, under God, was the 
part he was destined to play. 

In the midst of the weariness and disgust which enfeebled 
the ancient world, a vast hope ever swelled in the breast of 
this people; it alone believed in the redemption of man, alone in 
a prodigy inexplicable by reason; it looked forward to the age 
of gold to which all other nations looked back. Thanks to 
Judaism, the idea of God had ever shone on a darkened 
world, and its action had always been visible amid all human 
extravagances. From the Jewish blood, quickened by the 
Spirit, he was born whose name is Saviour, the Being who 
realized the prophetic ideal and snatched the human soul 


30 


JESUS CHRIST. 


from the bottomless abyss of error and vice in which for 
centuries it had struggled, vanquished, and despairing. 

The imperfection and mistakes of man, his illusions and 
narrowness of mind, always leave their imprint on the vast 
work of God. The Jews, as a whole, were false to their 
destiny; they mingled the most absurd exclusiveness with the 
grand idea of one God ; they stifled the lofty morality of 
Moses under wholly material observances and rites ; they 
degraded their hopes of a Messiah to the level of their race 
prejudices, of their national and religious preconceptions. 
They thought that Jehovah, the one true God, was their 
special God ; their ritual and ceremonial law the necessary 
and universal condition of salvation ; and the expected 
Messiah the great conqueror who should at last avenge their 
long oppression. 

These prejudices had blinded and hardened the popular 
conscience to such an extent that Judaism, destined by 
Providence to prepare the way for the Messiah, became the 
greatest obstacle to the Messianic work. But as paganism 
had its elect who escaped the universal contagion, so 
Judaism had its faithful people, a little unknown flock, 
knowing not the mistakes of doctors, priests and people, 
keeping in silence their hope in God. 

The Gospel documents throw a flood of light on this 
portion of the nation set apart, on these “ Israelites without 
guile,” 1 among whom God was to choose the instruments for 
his work Many types borrowed from different groups are 
sketched in lines calm but sure, firm and deep. The old 
priest Zacharias, the shepherds of Bethlehem, the aged 
Simeon, Anna the prophetess, enable us to see that, in the 
sacerdotal world, all consciences were not warped and petri¬ 
fied by the casuistry of the Scribes, that in the high and 
learned society of Jerusalem, and even in the middle classes, 



1 John i. 47. 



NAZARETH, FROM THE SOUTH. 

Now called En Nasirah. The large building on the hill of Neby Sa’in is the English Orphanage for Girls. 



































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


31 


among the women above all, piety inspired their worship and 
filled more than one heart with ardent prayers, pleading for 
the mercy of God on the people and for the coming of the 
true Saviour. 

Such were the elements fused in mankind, towards the 
eighth century of Rome, in the 192nd Olympiad, and according 
to Jewish chronology, at the end of four thousand years from 
the creation. It was, according to the first word which fell 
from the lips of Jesus, 1 “the fulness of time.” The empire, 
paganism, philosophy, official Judaism, all human forces had 
accomplished their evolution ; the world was dying, enslaved 
by Roman policy, degraded and brought to despair by false 
religions, asking philosophers in vain for the secrets of life and 
virtue. Judaism itself was in the death-throe, faithless to 
its destiny. There was never a more critical moment ; 
but God was over all, and among his elect people humble 
souls prayed and hoped. Beyond Judaism, a vague 
expectation, to which poets, historians and the Sibylline 
books bear witness, was astir, and kept the world in suspense: 
such a presentiment as goes before all the great events of 
history. 

The birth of Jesus was at hand. 

1 Marki. 15. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE BIRTH OF JESUS. HIS CONCEPTION. 

The birth of Jesus was unlike our own. He was not born 
like us, “ of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man ” ; 1 bringing to mankind the secret and the power 
of a new birth by the Spirit, he was born of a woman and 
of the Spirit of God. 

The Spirit of God is the sovereign power ; who commands 
the evolution of all things, and presides over the ordered and 
progressive movement of the universe. As he once intervened 
in chaos and matter to produce sentient being, as in animal 
life to produce thinking creatures, so was he to intervene 
among thinking creatures, in order that “ Earth might give 
her fruit,” and that mankind might see the Saviour, the Holy 
One, the Son of God, 2 blossom on the earth. 

The result of divine intervention had been till now only 
a creature ; this time the result was infinitely great. God 
united himself personally to his work ; and as he had incar¬ 
nated life in matter, sensation in life, thought in sensation, he 
now made himself incarnate in mankind. The separate 
kingdoms are superimposed on, and enwrap, each other: the 
kingdom of life is added to the kingdom of matter; the 
animal kingdom to the kingdom of life; the human kingdom 
to the animal kingdom; the Kingdom of God had come, and 
the Son of God was made man. All these successive births 

1 John i. 13. 

2 Luke i. 35. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


33 


together constitute the great drama of the world, they are all 
mysterious ; and the more perfect the created being, the more 
profound the mystery. 

Life is more hidden than matter, animal more enigmatical 
than organic life, man more inscrutable than the animal, Jesus 
more incomprehensible than all. He who would know the origin 
of things must understand the material conditions under which 
beings are produced, the first cause escapes all experience; 
we cannot tell whence comes matter, whence life, whence sen¬ 
tient being, whence a thinking creature, whence mind, whence 
the Christ. Before such phenomena science can only confess 
her ignorance ; but reason, looking into causes, says: From 
the Spirit of God. We must ask the Gospel documents 1 
under what sensible and historical form the action of the Spirit 
was manifest in the birth of Jesus. The gospels are the only 
documents of the ancient world which give us any details of 
this event, so secret, almost unperceived, which was, however, 
to change the face of the world. 

The first scene passed in an obscure region of Galilee ; the 
name, till then unknown, was Nazareth, which means flower or 
branch. Coming from Jerusalem, the little town is seen from 
the last hills of Samaria, as a white point on the scarped 
heights overlooking the plain of Jezreel ; its grey houses, 
square, with flat roofs, are spread on the eastern slope of two 
hills, separated by a ravine, up which the steep main street of 
Nazareth climbs. There are the fountains for ablution, the 
workshops, the market, the synagogue. To the east of the 
town is a valley wherein is the well now called the Fountain 
of Mary. The ravine and the valley join each other, beyond 
the last houses, in a little plain which makes the grassy 
bottom of the cup within which Nazareth is placed. Green in 
the spring, this plain becomes dry in summer, and is the 


1 For the value of these documents, see Introduction. 


34 


JESUS CHRIST. 


threshing-floor where the people of Nazareth tread out the 
wheat and the barley under the feet of their oxen and 
winnow their grain in the evening breeze. 

Olives and fig trees, nopals with large evergreen leaves, 
pomegranates, almonds, and lemon trees, intermingled with 
black cypresses, justify the name of this little town, so fertile 
and flourishing. The paths which lead to the well are 
animated morning and evening by troops of girls and women, 
who walk slowly, silent, and grave, their vessels on their heads, 
and their hands raised to hold them, their veils cast back and 
floating on the air, like Greek statues in motion. On feast days 
and the sabbath the field-paths are full. Groups of men and 
women, apart, are seen on the slope of the hills, and under 
the olive trees, near the tombs; they sit on the ground and 
talk ; men covered with their cloaks, women in striped robes, 
their brows bound, wrapped as in a shroud by their large 
white linen shawls. The place is full of sweetness and silence; 
there are no sharp outlines in these undulating, unbroken hills. 
The chain of Djebel-es-Sikh forms a circular horizon ; no 
sound troubles this solitude, where looks and thought 
mount naturally to heaven. There, in one of those quiet 
homes, lived unknown the maiden who was to receive the 
highest revelation of God. 


The hopes of the Jewish nation were about to bear fruit. 
God looked not to the great, or the religious chiefs, the 
doctors, the wise, or the rich; but chose from the crowd a 
humble creature. He reserved to himself, in the heart of the 
people, souls wherein dwelt the very genius of the nation, from 
whom he summoned the elect who should save it. The 
maiden was called Mary, and was not yet sixteen years old. 

Tradition says that her father was named Joachim and her 
mother Anne; it is believed that her father died when she 
was yet an infant; of royal descent and of the race of 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


35 


David j 1 she was educated in the Temple. It was a strange 
thing that among a people of whose women each might hope 
to be the mother of the Messiah, in a race where, on that 
account, barrenness was a disgrace, she, obedient to a divine 
inspiration, vowed herself to God as a virgin. Yet, according 
to Jewish law and custom, being sole heiress, she was espoused 
and promised to a man named Joseph, of her own tribe and 
family, her nearest relation who could receive her inheritance . 2 
The ceremony of entrance into her husband’s house had not 
yet been celebrated ; she lived in her mother’s home, preparing 
her wedding-garments, like all the young women of her 
country . 3 

Now, one day, she saw, under a human form, Gabriel, the 
angel of the Lord, appear to her, and enter the house. 

The angel said to her : “ Hail, full of grace. The Lord is 
with thee. Blessed art thou among women.” Jewish maidens, 
when betrothed, live retired and concealed with their com¬ 
panions, far from the sight of men. 

“And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, 
and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should 
be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou 
hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive 
in thy womb, and bring ferth a son, and shalt call his name 
Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne 
of his father David : and he shall reign over the house of 
Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end .” 4 

The Virgin then understood that he spoke of the expected 
Saviour, who should raise for ever the throne of David which 
had been cast down, who should be the glory of Israel, the 
desire of the nations, the pride of his mother. How should she 

1 Appendix C : The Two Genealogies of Jesus. 

2 Appendix C : Ibid. 

3 Appendix B : Marriage among the Jews . 

* Luke i. 29-33. 


36 


JESUS CHRIST. 


be called to play this divine part, who had resolved never to 
become a mother after the manner of men ? In her surprise, 
she simply asked: “ How shall this be, seeing I know not a 
man ? ” 1 

“And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy 
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest 
shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” And 
the angel gave her a sign : “Thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also 
conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month 
with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall 
be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord ; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel 
departed from her.” 2 

Such was the birth of Jesus. 

His hold on humanity was only through his mother. He 
who came to inaugurate the new race of the sons of God, 
stood apart from the ordinary course of nature. He was to 
be begotten by no man, but of the Holy Spirit in the womb of 
the Virgin. Thus one of the greatest, most wondrous sayings 
which ever fell from the mouth of a seer of Israel, one of the 
most mysterious, was accomplished : “ Behold, a virgin shall 
conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel .” 3 

Nearly a hundred years later, an aged apostle, one most 
profoundly initiated into the secrets of his master’s soul, St. 
John, was to give the interpretation of this fact. He was to 
borrow the very language of Plato, and in a page which 
surpasses all that Greek philosophy had said most sublimely 
about God, he was to teach that in Jesus : “The Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us.” 4 

1 Luke i. 34. 

2 Luke i. 35-38. 

3 Isaiah vii. 14. 

4 John i. 14. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


37 


The highest aspiration of mankind found in the Son 
of Man a reality which went beyond it. God was made 
man ; and human nature, in Christ, became the nature of 
God. This being was to be the centre of the whole religious 
movement; whoever would raise himself to God must ally 
himself to him ; he is the stone 1 placed in the midst of time ; 
those who fall against it would be broken ; those who rested 
on it were never to be shaken; little by little they were to 
form the building, the city, the Kingdom of God, the supreme 
end of all creation, in whose expectation the whole creature 
languished, suffered, and groaned. 

When the Spirit of God acts in certain elect souls to the 
accomplishment of the same end, he draws them towards each 
other and associates them by an irresistible movement. On the 
day after that on which Mary was called to be the mother of 
Jesus, she went in all haste to another woman, her cousin, 
chosen, in spite of her age and her barrenness, to be the 
mother of John the Baptist. 

Elisabeth dwelt with her husband, the priest Zacharias, in 
the mountains of Judaea, in a little spot such as we frequently 
find in Palestine . 2 The village called Karem, now Ain- 
Karim , 3 is situated on a spur of the mountains, which overtops 
and closes in a circle of hills. Vineyards, diversified by olive 
and fig trees, abound, and the fountain which springs up near 
the village bears their name. On the unbroken line of the 
horizon are some little fortified watch-towers and a few 
tufts of terebinths and arbutus with their lustrous foliage. 

The meeting of these two women, told at length by St. 
Luke, places in a full light all that was so strangely agitating 
this little inner circle in which the great hopes of Israel were 


1 Rom. ix. 32. 

2 See Appendix D : The Place of John the Baptist s Birth . 

3 “Vineyard Well” in Hebrew. 


38 


JESUS CHRIST. 


beginning to be realized, and wherein God was preparing in 
secret the salvation of the human race. 

Those who share the same sentiment understand each 
other without words; and the two mothers understood each 
other at once. 

“ And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salu¬ 
tation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb: and Elisabeth 
was filled with the Holy Ghost: and she spake out with a loud 
voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is 
the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the 
mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as 
the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe 
leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed: 
for there shall be a performance of those things which were 
told her from the Lord .” 1 

Then Mary declared to Elisabeth the mystery of her own 
vocation and motherhood. 

“ And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my 
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded 
the lowliness of his handmaiden : for, behold, from hence¬ 
forth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is 
mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his name. And 
his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all 
generations. He hath shewed strength with his arm ; he 
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted 
the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good 
things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath 
holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy: as he 
spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever .” 2 

Poetry is the language of strong impressions and lofty 
ideas ; among the Jews, as among all Eastern nations, it was full 


1 Luke i. 41-45. 

2 Luke i. 46 55. 




THE HOLY NIGHT. 
From the Painting by Correggio, 












THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


39 


of inspiration : every soul is poetic, and sings in joy or sorrow. 
If ever a full heart gave vent to an inspired hymn, it was the 
heart of the maiden elected by God to be the mother of the 
Messiah. She borrowed, from the histories in the Bible, of those 
women who before her had felt the awe of motherhood, as Leah 1 
and the mother of Samuel , 2 expressions which she enlarged 
and transfigured. The national hymns which had celebrated 
the glory of her people, the mercy, power, wisdom and faithful¬ 
ness of God, rose naturally to lips accustomed to song. No 
creature was ever conscious of a higher destiny, and remained 
more humble and self-forgetting in her greatness. Man 
naturally exalts himself, and often boasts himself against God 
on account of his power or intellect; the handmaid of God pre¬ 
vailed through her lowliness, and exalted herself only in God. 
She prophesied her future glory, and already heard the loud 
acclaim which should be raised to her through the ages; but 
in it she saw only the triumph of him who had done to her 
great things. Not thus speaks any mere woman, a daughter 
of Eve ; this inspired canticle overpassed all earthly bounds, 
and closed the cycle of the older days ; it was no longer hope 
which called upon God, but triumphant faith which saw and 
possessed him ; it was the hymn of the new age, the most 
splendid cry of joy which ever sprang from a human breast. 

The abode of Mary at Karem, in the house of Zacharias, 
lasted for three months. It was one long prayer, one uninter¬ 
rupted confidence and adoration of the designs of God and 
the religious expectation of their fulfilment. The sentiments 
which this great hymn of the Virgin expressed were too deep 
not to exclude all else; she lived in them as those whom love 
absorbs, but with this difference, that human love is concen¬ 
trated and isolated, divine love spreads abroad to nourish 


a Gen. xxx. 10-13. 
3 I. Sam. ii. 1, 8. 




40 


JESUS CHRIST. 


others ; Mary shed rays of God on the family which gave her 
hospitality, into the souls of Zacharias and Elisabeth, as well 
as that of the child which should be born. 

When her time was come, Elisabeth gave birth to a son, 
according to the promises which Zacharias had received, when 
one morning in the Temple at Jerusalem, at the time of 
offering incense, he saw at the right hand of the altar the 
angel of the Lord, and learned from him the great and religious 
destiny of the child . 1 The birth caused great stir in the 
neighbouring villages and among the kinsfolk of Zacharias ; 
the advanced age of Elisabeth was known ; this birth, 
beyond ordinary hope, proved that the power of God was 
there. On all sides the mother was congratulated. 

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the infant, and 
this was the occasion of new and extraordinary events. 
The parents and friends wished, according to custom, to give 
the first-born the name of his father, Zacharias, but the 
mother forbade it. Among the Jews the privilege of naming 
the child is reserved to the mother. None should know 
better than she; for if the name were to describe him 
who bore it, the mother’s mind would always find the 
most expressive name, knowing well that she owed this son 
to God. Elisabeth, prompted by love and faith, chose that 
the name of the child should express the favour done to the 
mother. She said: “He shall be called John . 2 And they 
said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by 
this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would 
have him called. And he asked for a writing table, and 
wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all. 
And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue 
loosed, and he spake, and praised God. And fear came 
on all that dwelt round about them : and all these sayings 

1 Luke i. 1-23. 

2 “ The Gift of God.” 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


41 


were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judaea. 
And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, 
saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand 
of the Lord was with him.” 

All the neighbourhood was stirred, and talked of what had 
happened in the house of the old priest; there was wonder in 
all the hill country of Judaea, where the tidings of these events 
were spread abroad. Messianic hopes were then alive among 
the people, and the great messenger was expected. The son 
of Zacharias might be either this messenger or some prophet. 
Men speculated about his future; asking what this child 
should be, and, according to a favourite formula of the 
Hebrews, they said : The hand of the Lord is with him . 1 

While these uncertain rumours passed from village to 
village, the work of God was continued about the cradle of 
John. His father, too, was carried away by the ancient spirit 
of the prophets: he in part discovered the mystery of which Mary 
of Nazareth carried in her bosom the ineffable secret; he had 
a perfect consciousness of the vocation of his son, he under¬ 
stood that all God had announced by the mouth of his saints and 
prophets from eternity was now accomplished, and, inspired by 
the Holy Ghost, he chanted a sublime prophecy: 

“ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and 
redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salva¬ 
tion for us in the house of his servant David ; as he spake by 
the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the 
world began : that we should be saved from our enemies, and 
from the hand of all that hate us ; to perform the mercy pro¬ 
mised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; 
the oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would 
grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our 
enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and 
righteousness before him, all the days of our life. 


1 Luke i. 66. 


42 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Then, turning to his son, he cried : “And thou, child, shalt 
be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before 
the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge 
of salvation unto his people, by the remission of their sins, 
through the tender mercy of our God ; whereby the dayspring 
from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in 
darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into 
the way of peace .” 1 

The learning of the Pharisees of the school of Hillel or 
Shammai, the ritual piety of the priesthood, were strangers to 
such a language ; a new spirit was moving in mankind. Even 
before his birth, while yet scarce conceived, and from the very 
womb of his mother, Jesus gave light, sanctity and inspiration. 
He sanctified John in the womb of Elisabeth, he inspired 
Zacharias with those accents which recall and rival the 
ancient prophets; the old priest transformed by Christ is as 
great as they. 

It is not enough to record the material and tangible facts, 
we must also lay stress on sentiments, ideas, and inspirations ; 
the interest of the history lies in those hidden springs which 
give them life and reality. Nothing here below is visibly 
accomplished which has not its invisible cause in the soul 
and in God. 

The quiet valley among the hills of Judah, where Mary, 
Elisabeth, and Zacharias the priest dwelt, is like an inner 
shrine, or church. Christianity was there in all its fulness; 
God was present but unseen ; he exalted the two mothers, 
and filled their hearts with his word and with his fire. These 
his creatures, without human resources, divested of all which, 
humanly speaking, could move the world, were the agents of that 
nascent force which should occupy, overturn, and transform it; 
they declared that the ideal foreseen from afar by the prophets 


Luke i. 67-79. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


43 


was about to be accomplished ; the hopes of the nation found 
in them a pure and copious source; the great work of God, all 
the plan of unspeakable mercy, which has for its object the 
salvation of Israel and of mankind, on condition of self-denial 
and humility, was conceived and put forth by them with 
absolute clearness. 

In the early days of Christianity, before the marvellous 
triumph of the Spirit of Jesus, we might perhaps have 
thought little of these obscure souls and their prophetic 
songs; but in face of the mature and ever victorious work, 
we must recognise in them a spirit more than human; they 
were beings of the highest order, God alone could bring them 
forth, they are beyond all that the fancy of poets had ventured 
to imagine. 

The Gospels imply that Mary was not present at the 
birth of John and at the feast of his circumcision; for it is 
only after his mention of her return to Nazareth that St. 
Luke narrates the event of which the house of Zacharias was 
the scene, and there is nothing to disclose or even to suggest 
her presence . 1 The Virgin was as yet only betrothed; the cere¬ 
mony of her reception into the home of her husband had not 
yet been celebrated : the time fixed for this family gathering 
was drawing on ; and she returned to Nazareth. 

After the quiet days at Ain-Karim, a trial awaited her. 
The signs of her condition were evident; it was not clear how 
God would preserve her maiden honour before men, and in 
the eyes of the bridegroom to whom she was affianced. 
Although this thought must have crossed the mind of Mary, 
that which would have been anguish to an ordinary soul who 
thought of herself, could not trouble the serenity of her 
who had said, “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto 
me according to thy word.” All those who feel, in any 

1 Luke i. 56. 

10 


44 


JESUS CHRIST. 


degree, instruments of God, give themselves with full faith 
to him ; who knows how to set aside or break down obstacles. 
“ Mary,” as Bossuet finely says, " gave up everything to God, 
and remained in peace.” 

Meanwhile at Nazareth, Joseph, who had not been told 
the mystery of which Mary kept the secret in her reserved 
humility, saw her state. Appearances led him to believe 
that his betrothed was unfaithful, but respect for her virtue 
forbade suspicion. Unable to guess the impenetrable designs 
of God, he hesitated. In his human justice he resolved on a 
course which seemed to him the best way out of the difficulty, 
that rather than make his betrothed a public example as an 
adulteress, he would put her away privately. The thoughts 
of man, even the most moderate and wise, are far from the 
righteousness and the truth of God ; if the resolution of 
Joseph had been kept, it would have saved his conscience, 
but it would have destroyed the honour of the mother and 
her child. When man has done all in his power to learn his 
duty, he may still make mistakes ; but he merits the help 
of God, and God intervenes to save him. Joseph was 
illuminated by the light Divine, and was directly associated 
with the work to be accomplished so near him, which as yet 
he did not suspect. In the midst of his doubts and anguish, 
at the moment when he was about to accomplish what he 
believed to be right, he had a dream by night: the angel of the 
Lord appeared unto him, saying: “Joseph, thou son of David, 
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is 
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring 
forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall 
save his people from their sins .” 1 

The light of God, by whatever way it enters the con¬ 
science, whether by outward visions or dreams, in sleep or 
waking, by sudden and direct inspirations, by a voice from 


1 Matthew i. 20-22. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


45 

within or from without, from nature or from man, is always 
clear ; the mind is conscious, the will resolves, and the man 
acts. Joseph awoke and rose, and without hesitation obeyed 
the word of God. 

The reception of Mary into the house of her betrothed 
was quickly celebrated, according to the law of Moses 
and the Jewish and Galilaean customs . 1 There were 
seven days of feasting ; lambs were sacrificed ; there was a 
procession of girls, with lighted lamps, and sprays of myrtle. 

The type of the Virgin is purity and grace, sweetness and 
power, humility and majesty ; it has inspired the greatest 
artists and surpassed their genius; the piety of Christians 
contemplates it, and the humble maiden of Nazareth stands 
before the world as the incarnation of the ideal woman. 

The marriage had nothing, except the perfection of the 
pair, to distinguish it from others ; apart from Joseph and Mary 
no one suspected that, in the counsels of God, it was intended 
to prepare the cradle of Messiah, and to give the Christ and his 
mother the support of a man, who should be, according to the 
law, the husband of one and the father of the other. The 
bride and bridegroom lived as brother and sister, according to 
the discreet but direct expression of the Gospel, “ And he 
knew her not .” 2 

Joseph understood the part that he was to take in the 
birth of Jesus; he felt himself the guardian of two things 
alike sacred and weak, the virginity of his wife and the child¬ 
hood of him who should be born of her. 

Noble and gentle, this simple workman was to have 
the glory of passing among the Jews as the father of the 
Nazarene; he was to remain a model of self-denial, 
devotion, and fidelity; his name was to be united to 

1 See Appendix B : Marriage among the Jews. 

2 Matthew i. 25. 


4 6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the two most beloved names on earth, those of Mary and 
of Jesus; the Christian Church was never to separate them 
in her worship; in the midst of her trials, throughout the 
ages, overwhelmed by her human weakness, inheritor of the 
infirmities of Christ, whose burthen God has laid upon her, 
she was to lift her eyes towards this chosen man, and to call 
him her invisible protector. 

The days passed on ; and the expectation was great at 
Nazareth in the house of Joseph the carpenter. The calm 
narrative of the Gospels does not give us the smallest detail ; 
but those who know a mother’s heart understand the divine 
emotions of the Virgin on the eve of giving birth to the 
Christ. Earthly mothers are troubled in their vague dreams 
and look forward with anxiety to the mysterious future; the 
mother of Jesus had infinite hopes, of which nothing could 
diminish the fulness nor trouble the serenity. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF JESUS FROM HIS BIRTH TO 
THE RETURN FROM EGYPT. 

A NEW event in the.history of Judaea, towards the years 
747-749 of Rome, put in motion the whole population of 
Herod’s little kingdom, the eastern provinces, and the various 
states tributary to the empire. 1 

Augustus had received from the senate the renewal of his 
imperial office for ten years. He had reached the end of the 
first five, and had numbered the Roman citizens, even in those 
towns which had civil rights, as Antioch, Berytus in Syria, 
and Tarsus in Cilicia. For the third time the doors of the 
temple of Janus had been closed ; never had there been more 
complete and universal peace in the empire. The master of 
the world took advantage of this, made his inventory like any 
wealthy proprietor, and as a wise farmer or steward measured 
his lands, numbered his subjects and allies, regulated the 
calendar, and noted his revenues in an account book, some 
fragments of which are still extant. He ordered a census of 
all the inhabitants of the provinces and of allied or vassal 
kingdoms ; Judaea, under the rule of Herod, was subject to 
this imperial edict. 

Attempts have been made to deny this fact. Criticism 
has done all in its power to convict St. Luke of anachronism, 2 

1 See Appendix A : General Chronology of the Life of Jesus , sec. 1, 
The Census under Quirinus. 

2 Luke ii. 12. 


48 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the only author who has mentioned the census of the 
provinces and Judaea; but an impartial historian cannot 
follow those who dispute the witness of the third Gospel. 1 

The people of Herod was numbered. The subservient 
king, whose policy never omitted any occasion of flattering 
Augustus, took good care not to disobey the will of his 
master : an order was given to all the Jews to enrol them¬ 
selves, each in his own city, and to take an oath of fidelity to 
Caesar and the King. 2 This was the occasion of the journey 
of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, as Joseph belonged to this 
little town, 3 and legally had to be enrolled there. No doubt 
both saw the finger of God in the unexpected decree which 
took them to the very place, where, according to the prophets, 
the Saviour of Israel should be born. In spite of her 
advanced pregnancy, in spite of the winter season and the 
fatigues of a long journey, Mary accompanied Joseph. 

The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is three or 
four days’ journey, taking the direct road across the plain of 
Jezreel, the mountains of Samaria and Judaea, by Ginaea, 
Bethulia, Sichem, Lebonah, Bethel, Tel-el-Ful, Jerusalem, 
and the plain of Rephaim. It was the constant caravan 
route; ordinary people travelled on foot, but it is rare in 
Judaea not to find an ass with each family; the indefatigable 
and docile animal lives on little, it is at once the hackney 
and the beast of burthen for the poor. 

A halt was made near a well, beside the road, under the 
shade of some tree; or at sunset, in the rainy season, at 
the entrance to the villages, in the caravanserai which served 
as a shelter to travellers and their beasts ; at dawn 
the journey was resumed, the travellers singing psalms 


1 See Appendix A, sec. i. 
3 Antiq . xvii. 2-4. 

8 Luke i. 27. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


49 


which spoke of Jerusalem and the house of Jehovah ; the end 
of the journey was reached by easy stages. Thus it was that 
Joseph and Mary travelled, together with those whom the 
edict of Augustus brought, as it did them, to Bethlehem or 
some other town of Judah. 

Bethlehem 1 lies two leagues to the south of Jerusalem, 
above the plain of Rephaim, in the very heart of the mountains 
of Judaea. It occupies the summit of two hills, joined one to the 
other in form of a crescent; deep valleys isolate it on all sides ; 
that on the south, the most fertile, the Wady-el-Karroubeh, 
between the two points of the crescent, is a steep slope, so 
that the walls of the terraces made to bank up the soil give it 
the aspect of a vast and verdant amphitheatre, covered with 
vines, olives, and figs, with almond and carob trees. The 
horizon, narrowed to the north and west by the mountains, 
opens magnificently to the south and east. There was the 
cornfield where Ruth the Moabitess went to glean, and hard 
by the little hill, with the village of Beit-Saour, was the 
threshing-floor of Boaz. Further is the desert of Judaea with 
its sandy hills, like a mass of grey cinders. The sun shines 
upon this barren scene, but nothing grows there. Behind, 
in a basin over which rise, as a rampart, the blue and 
violet masses of the hills of Moab, the Dead Sea hides its blue 
waters. To the south a lonely mountain raises its cone : 
Herodion, where the old king Herod desired to be buried 
and to sleep his eternal sleep. 

Such is the little country which saw the birth of David, 
and to which his descendants were now hastening. The 
houses were full of people, the village khan, or inn, was full. 
When Mary and Joseph came, there was no room for them. 
They had to find shelter in a neighbouring cave, one of 
the hollows so often found in Palestine, half way up 
the side of a chalk hill. This was called the manger, 

1 In Hebrew Beth-Lehem, “The House of Bread.” 


50 


JESUS CHRIST. 


or stable; it was at the extremity of the place, on the 
point looking towards Hebron, and was used as a shelter 
for cattle. Here the two homeless travellers betook therm 
selves, and in that mean place was born the Son of David, 
whom the angel had announced to his mother as the Holy 
One, the Son of God, the Saviour, and the heir of an 
eternal throne. This fact, the most important in history, is 
related by the evangelist in a few simple and sublime words 
as if he were speaking of the lowest of the Bethlehemites: 

“ And so it was that, while they were there, the days were 
accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought 
forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, 
and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for 
them in the inn.” 1 

She who had conceived as a virgin brought forth as a 
virgin ; the Gospel implies that she did not know either the 
weakness or the prostration of our mothers. She herself 
received the child and laid him to rest in the make-shift 
cradle. Christian faith kneels for ever before this woman and 
the child upon her breast; it has learned, in gazing on them, 
gentleness, poverty, and sacrifice; it has constructed ever new 
visions of that ineffable scene, without tiring, and without 
exhausting its beauty, its power, or its charm. 

This happened on a December night, in the month of 
Tebeth, according to the Jewish calendar, unknown by any¬ 
one, without other witness than Mary and Joseph. The little 
town lay asleep, unsuspecting the birth of him, who, rather 
than David, was to render it immortal. But the Spirit of God 
was fully poured out on this cave and the neglected cradle; and 
was to draw thither the elect. All the initiative is from God : 
they whom he enlightens, see; they whom he calls, hear; they 
whom he does not touch, stay dead in their ignorance and darkness. 

At the foot of Bethlehem, a little beyond Beit-Saour, in 
1 Luke ii. 6-7. 



BETHLEHEM, FROM THE SOUTHWEST. 






























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 5 I 

the very plain where Boaz once had fields of wheat and 
barley, and where Ruth had come to glean, shepherds were 
keeping their flocks. Shepherds, in the East, represent the 
lowest class of the agricultural population ; they are the 
servants of servants. The farmer does no work ; he has his 
labourers, workmen, and shepherds. They may be seen at 
the present day, their head covered with a long black veil, a 
sheepskin on their shoulders, their feet either naked or shod 
with sandals, a staff of oak or sycamore in their hand, and 
they watch from dark to dawn, seated on some rock, round 
large fires. The earth, sown later in the year, is covered, 
from the first rains, with grass and flowers, and the flocks 
live on this early herbage. While the shepherds of Beit- 
Saour watched their flocks by night, “ Lo, the angel of the 
Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone 
round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the 
angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good 
tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto 
you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is 
Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye 
shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a 
manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude 
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” 1 

The unseen world thrilled at the birth of Jesus. Nothing 
is accomplished here below but what is decreed on high; 
terrestrial phenomena are the effects of heavenly and im¬ 
penetrable causes; all the future, all the mystery of this cradle, 
were in the two words which were to fill space and time: 
Glory and Peace; glory to God, peace to man. Henceforward 
the earth, which knew not God, had a Son who was to teach 
us his name and establish his kingdom : mankind, given over 
to the brute law of destruction in her struggle for existence, 


1 Luke ii. 9-14. 


52 


JESUS CHRIST. 


was to know the law of peace, because she would be ruled by 
the law of love. 

“ And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from 
them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us 
now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come 
to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they 
came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe 
lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made 
known abroad the saying which was told them concerning 


A' 


this child.” 1 

Simple souls whom God enlightens see far: they foresee 
what the sages with all their philosophy are unable to under¬ 
stand. Faith alone knows God and his designs ; if reason 
discusses them they escape and blind it; if it determine to 
bend them to its own needs and narrow formulae, it results 
often in denying them, and generally in disfiguring or 
minimising them. 

The shepherds returned to their flocks and told the 
wondrous tale of what they had seen, glorifying and 
praising God. It does not seem, however, that the testi¬ 
mony of these poor people either stirred Bethlehem or 
troubled the peaceful lowliness of Jesus’ cradle: he remained 
unknown with his mother and Joseph, but Mary kept all these 
sayings in her heart; like all mothers, she made her memories 
a treasure, a sort of inward book, which she read over and 
over tenderly. 


The field of the shepherds is still there ; flocks feed in 
winter under the olives, as in the days of Jesus, in the fields 
where the grass still grows green, and the anemones flower. 
Worship has never left the place where shone the brightness of 
the birthday dawn of Christ. On Christmas evening the people 
of Bethlehem flock to the church of St. Helena, of which only 


1 Luke ii. 15-17. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


53 


the ruins remain, and in its desolate crypt they pray 
to the shepherds of Beit-Saour, their ancestors, who were 
the first apostles. Clad in their long white veils, seated in 
groups on the broken walls, beneath the shade of the circling 
olives, the women, seen from afar, recall the mysterious beings 
who heralded the advent of Jesus. The crowd has an air of 
cheerfulness and calm, which harmonizes well with the 
memories of which the plain is full; and with that Eastern light 
which colours the whole and gives to the sterile rock itself an 
appearance of richness and of life. 

After eight days the child, according to the law of Moses , 1 
was circumcised in the same house which sheltered the humble 
strangers. To all appearance their family festival was like those 
of the very poorest people; all was done simply and quietly, 
there was nothing extraordinary except the prophetic name 
given to the infant, and even that of Jesus might seem common, 
for other children bore it. It would have its divine meaning 
in Jesus only to the eyes of faith, in the souls of the father 
and mother. 

The first-born of every living creature, among the Jews, 
was offered to God ; 2 and in order to redeem it, five shekels of 
Jewish money, or an hundred pence, were paid. Thirty-three 
days after circumcision, the woman who had given birth 
went to the Temple for her purification ; if rich, she brought 
a lamb for sacrifice; if poor, a pair of doves . 3 In obedience 
to this Mosaic law, Mary and Joseph came from Bethlehem 
to Jerusalem, on the appointed day, taking Jesus with them. 
They presented themselves in the Court of the Women, before 
the Gate of Nicanor, at the foot of the steps where was the 
entry to the Court of the Priests, in front of the Altar of Burnt 
Offerings. They gave the five pieces, and Mary handed over 
to the priest two doves. 

1 Levit. xii. 3. 

2 Exod. xiii. 2-12; Numb, xviii. 15-16. 

8 Levit. xii. 4-8. 


54 


JESUS CHRIST. 


An unexpected and interesting event then happened. 
The courts and porches of the Temple, as are the mosques 
at present, were filled at the hours of sacrifice and prayer by 
a crowd who came to sacrifice, to bring their offerings, to 
perform their ablutions, and to recite the Geiillah, or prayer 
of redemption. 

Among the Jews who asked of God that they might see the 
day of the Messiah and of the Life of future generations, and who, 
kneeling before the altar of offerings, saw Mary give her son to 
the priest, was an old man named Simeon. The Spirit of God 
had led him to the Temple at the very moment when Jesus 
was presented. He lived in Jerusalem, and belonged to that 
pious class who lived in faith and the fear of God, and made 
his constant prayer that he might see the consolation of Israel. 
During his long life he had seen the earthly fortunes of his 
land decline; he was among those saddened by the reign of 
Herod, with its heathen impieties, but nothing could subdue in 
him the hope of deliverance. He was the type of ardent and 
serene faith. Old age is too often complaining and dis¬ 
couraged, but under his white hair he kept the trust of young 
souls ; he did not grieve, but waited. God spoke to his heart; 
a secret voice told him that the hour of Israel’s salvation was 
at hand, and that he should not die until his eyes had seen the 
Lord’s Anointed . 1 A sudden illumination made known to him 
that this Saviour was the very child whom a poor woman was 
presenting to the priest; he took him in his arms, and, like 
Zacharias, the old man too became a prophet: 

“ Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salva¬ 
tion, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people ; 
a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy 
people Israel .” 2 


1 Luke ii. 26, &c. 

2 Luke ii. 28-32. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


55 


These sublime words have entered deeply into the 
Christian conscience, as the immortal expression of the joy 
of hopeful men who see at last the good in which they have 
believed with the perseverance of unconquerable faith. 

The parents of Jesus wondered to hear him thus speak 
of their child. “ Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his 
mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of 
many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; 
yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that 
the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed .” 1 

This prophecy of the sad destiny of Jesus, and the 
sufferings of his mother, was sadly verified. The public life 
of the Saviour was indeed to be a warfare without a truce, and 
his life beyond the tomb, in the Church founded by him in the 
midst of this distracted world, is a continual Calvary. To-day, 
as yesterday, and as he will be to-morrow, Christ is “ a sign 
which shall be spoken against.” All must be for him or against 
him ; he attracts or repels: he forces consciences to declare 
themselves. When words from a human mouth thus penetrate 
through the ages, throwing so clear a light, they reveal their 
origin : it is not man, but the Spirit of God who speaks. The 
voice of Simeon found more than one echo among those who 
went and came in the courts of the Temple ; the emotion of the 
old man could not but make an impression on them. 

There was also there a woman of great piety, called “ Anna, 
a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser : she 
was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years 
from her virginity; and she was a widow of about four-score and 
four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God 
with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in 
that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of 
him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem .” 2 

1 Luke ii. 34. 

2 Luke ii. 36-38. 


56 


JESUS CHRIST. 


But it does not seem that this emotion went beyond 
the few initiated on whom God sent the first rays of the 
dawning Christ. 

No rumour circulated among the people of Jerusalem, 
nothing stirred the palace of Herod and alarmed the suspicious 
tyrant; the chiefs of the nation did not even notice what had 
passed in the Temple ; elders and high priests, Pharisees 
and patriots, dreamt of a future very different from that 
foreshadowed in an old man’s prophecy over the head of an 
unknown babe. 

When their religious duties were accomplished, Joseph 
and Mary quitted Jerusalem and returned with Jesus into 
their own land, to Nazareth in Galilee . 1 It was then in the 
month Shebat, in the first days of February. A project, of 
which we see clear traces , 2 had little by little ripened in the 
mind of Joseph. Faithful to his mission of watching over the 
child which God had entrusted to him, he wished to treat him 
in accordance with his Messianic destiny. A prophet, the 
expected Saviour, the Messiah, should live and act in the 
kingdom of Judah. 

“Salvation is of the Jews,” said Jesus, later, to the 
Samaritan woman . 3 Popular opinion, even among pious 
Israelites, did not admit that the messenger of God, who was 
to be the glory and salvation of the people, would extend his 
work beyond the land of Judah, far from the national 
sanctuary to which all the Jews flocked from the four corners 
of the world, and where the God of Israel dwelt in his own 
home. 

Joseph remained with his family in the midst of that 
heathen Galilee of which the best Jews asked : “ Can any good 
thing come out of Nazareth ?” 4 though there was nothing to 

1 Luke ii. 39. 

2 Matt. ii. 22. 

9 John iv. 22. 

4 John i. 46. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


5 ? 


detain him there. He had resolved to live in Judaea, near 
Bethlehem, from which his family came, and which must have 
seemed to him destined for the growth as for the birth of the 
Messiah. Joseph’s reception there, after the birth of Jesus, 
by the shepherds of the country and their masters, encouraged 
him in his design, and this no doubt as his motive, a short 
time after his return to Nazareth, in making a new journey 
to Bethlehem, where he intended to dwell. So, too, when he 
brought back the child and his mother from Egypt, he did 
not think of returning to Nazareth, but to Bethlehem, and it 
needed a command of God to change his intention. Nazareth 
was predestined to conceal the Christ until his public life 
began. 

In this second sojourn, and probably towards the end of 
Adar (February and March), some time before the Passover 
of the year 750, several events took place, of which only the 
first Gospel preserves the memory, and these throw a new 
light, full of mystery and grandeur, on the infancy of Jesus. 

The religious expectations of the Jews in regard to the 
future of their race, that the Messiah was to bear sway over 
the world, were not confined within the limits of the little 
nation, but had penetrated Paganism and the East, giving a 
ray of hope to minds which had lost faith in Imperial Rome ; 
these expectations were in the air ; poets, historians, philo¬ 
sophers, priests, and astrologers, all dealt with them when 
they made researches into the future. 

In a land which the Gospel does not specify, but which 
can only be Chaldaea, Mesopotamia, Persia, or Arabia Petraea, 
for these are the countries described in Scripture under the 
vague name of the East, wise men, who sought in the book of 
the stars the secrets of the future, Magi, as we call them, saw 
one day a new star in the sky, 1 whether it were a meteor, a 
star properly so called, or a comet. 

1 See Appendix A: General Chronology of the Life of Jesus , § 2, 
The Star of the Magi. 


53 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Struck with this phenomenon, they examined the tradi¬ 
tions of their elders and masters, and, illuminated no doubt 
by divine light, they recognised the sign of the great ruler 
promised to Judaea. The Book of Daniel, in which was 
marked the succession of empires, and the time computed 
wherein the Son of Man was to come, could not be unknown 
to them. They were themselves perhaps descended from 
Balaam, the heathen prophet who had announced that a Star 
would arise from Jacob, and a Sceptre from the midst of 
Israel. 1 

Three among them left their country and took the road 
to Jerusalem ; where their rich and gorgeous caravan 
excited attention. They asked on all sides, and without 
throwing any doubt on the event which, according to them, 
must have been fulfilled, they went about, saying everywhere : 
“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have 
seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” 2 
The words of these strangers came to the ears of Herod ; 
the king was troubled, and Jerusalem was disturbed, where the 
hope of the Deliverer always found some eager souls. Thus 
disquieted, Herod called together the heads of religion and 
the doctors, and enquired of them where Christ should be 
born. They all answered : “ In Bethlehem of Judaea.” The 
Scriptures were plain, the tradition unanimous, and the 
prophet had said distinctly: “ But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, 
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet 
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler 
in Israel.” 3 

The old king, thus warned, “privily called the wise men, 
and enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared, 
and he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search 


1 Numbers xxiv. 17. 

2 Matt. ii. 2. 

3 Micah. v. 2. 





















THE ADORATION OF THE KINGS. 
From the Painting by C. C. PfannschmirtZ. 




THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


59 


diligently for the young child ; and when ye have found him, 
bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.” 1 

It does not seem that the Magi understood the secret 
plot hidden under the eager words of Herod. No doubt they 
were ignorant of the history of this ambitious ruler who 
himself wished to play the part of Messiah, and who shrank 
from no crime to put down those who might insult his jealous 
royalty. 

Having heard the king, they departed, and they had no 
sooner left Jerusalem than the star which they had seen in the 
east reappeared. When they saw the star, they rejoiced 
with exceeding great joy; and, lo, the star went before them, 
till it came and stood over where the young child was. And 
when they were come into the house, they saw the young 
child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped 
him ; and when they had opened their treasures, they pre¬ 
sented unto him gifts ; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

No doubt there is more here than Oriental ceremony; the 
sages who came from far were lighted by another light than 
that of an empty astrology; the star was a symbol of the 
brightness of God which shines in the conscience, and of the 
inspiration which leads souls to eternal truth. The Magi 
adored in this child, born but yesterday, no future conqueror; 
they saw in him Emmanuel, the true Christ, laid in a poor 
cradle; enlightened by the Spirit, they believed and adored. 
No words have come down to us declaring their faith; but 
their presents had a deep meaning: they offered gold to the 
king of the age to come, incense to the priest, myrrh to the 
victim, who, by his death, was to found an eternal Kingdom 
and priesthood among men. 

The sons of Balaam prophesied better than their ancestor, 
and opened the road to the Gentiles; mankind has followed 

1 Matt. ii. 8. 


ii 


6o 


JESUS CHRIST. 


them in crowds, and after their example has laid at the feet 
of Christ gold, incense, and myrrh ; has unceasingly adored, 
prayed, and suffered with him, and loved him even unto 
martyrdom. 

Herod awaited the return of the Magi; and they, when 
they had discovered what they sought, hesitated to inform 
the king, whose perfidious designs they perceived. A dream, 
wherein they recognised the will of God, having decided them 
not to return to him, they departed to their own country by 
another way, probably by the south of the Dead Sea. 

The visit of these religious sheiks, their munificence, their 
homage, their faith, must have reflected some glory on the 
poor dwelling of Joseph, and caused wonder that strangers 
so richly accompanied had come so far to see a child of the 
people. In the East all takes place openly; rumours would 
run from house to house through the little town of Bethlehem; 
no doubt the names of Messiah and Saviour were on every 
lip, and Joseph must have been somewhat fearful; for the 
cruelty and craft of Herod were known to all the Jews. 

Indeed, a storm was about to burst. Surprised that the 
Magi did not return, and feeling his schemes outwitted, Herod 
was furious. With the soul of a courtier, base and cringing 
before his masters, the Romans, he was imperious and harsh 
towards his subjects. Anger was one of the vices of this 
mistrustful nature ; it could only grow calm in satiety, and 
was only satiated in blood. He employed slaughter rather 
than banishment; when any threatened or attacked his 
power, he answered by death. Murder was the means by 
which he reigned. 

Scarcely had he mounted the throne when he asked 
Antony to sanction the execution of Antigonus, whom he 
had conquered; and Antigonus was beheaded. 1 He put to 


Antiq . xv I. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


61 


death all the members of the Sanhedrin who, during the 
siege of Jerusalem, had taken part against him and his 
Roman allies; Aristobulus, his brother-in-law, the son of 
Alexandra, was drowned by his orders in a bath at Jericho; 
he gave over to the executioner, under a false pretence of 
treason, old Hyrcanus, the last of the Asmonaeans; 1 he 
unjustly suspected Mariamne, one of his wives, and she had 
to die. The intrigues of Pheroras and Salome aroused his 
suspicion in regard to his two sons, Alexander and Aristo¬ 
bulus : he ordered them to be strangled. 2 As he grew old 
he became more cruel and stern; the Pharisees, exasperated 
by his irreligious and anti-national policy, plotted a revolution; 
he seized the two chiefs, Judas and Matthias, and had them 
burnt alive. 3 

When he saw that all Jerusalem was moved by the 
thought of a Deliverer who was born, the old despot at 
once resolved to seize and put him to death. But his 
satellites tried in vain to discover the child. Bethlehem was 
the object of secret search ; the violence of Herod grew 
with failure; he did not shrink from radical and revolting 
measures. He who had marked by murder almost every 
year of his reign, who just before his death caused the murder 
of his own son; who, when he saw his end approaching, and 
believing that none would lament at his funeral, ordered the 
massacre of the principal generals in the district of Jericho; 
now commanded the massacre of all the children at the 
breast in Bethlehem and the country round about. He was 
the typical example of an angry ahd ferocious tyrant. The 
hill where Rachel had been buried was stained with blood 
and wet with tears ; the cries of the mothers filled the valleys. 
It is necessary to have seen Eastern mourning, to have heard 


Antiq. xv. 9. 
Antiq. xv. 2. 
Antiq . xvii. 6. 


62 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the cries and sobs round newly-opened graves, in order to 
imagine the distress of the women who refused to be comforted 
because their children were not. Herod, after the murder of 
the sucklings of Bethlehem, might sleep in peace ; he thought 
he had stifled in blood the increasing hopes of the people ; 
but he was deceived. 

Herod succeeded only in tracing a bloody aureole round 
the cradle of Jesus ; who was thus escorted by a spotless band 
of martyrs. Others by thousands were to follow these slaugh¬ 
tered innocents ; the path of Christ across humanity is a way 
of blood; all who would follow the Crucified are devoted, 
like him, to deadly persecution in this world, where no one 
has been more opposed than God himself. 

Jesus escaped from the wrath of Herod ; for after the wise 
men had departed, Joseph was warned of God. The same 
voice which had before spoken to him, in a dream, on the eve 
of his marriage, now spoke again : “Arise, and take the young 
child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, for Herod will seek 
the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took 
the young child and his mother by night, and departed into 
Egypt.” 1 The Gospel tells us nothing of the incidents of this 
long journey, nor in what part of Egypt the fugitives abode. 
The only detail they give us is about the length of the 
sojourn : “ They remained until the death of Herod.” Legend, 
on the other hand, is extremely fanciful, and the apocryphal 
Gospels are full of marvels during the exile of the child Jesus. 
Wild beasts, lions and panthers, became gentle as lambs 
before him, palm-trees bowed as he passed ; flowers sprang 
where he trod, wells spouted forth in the desert to slake his 
thirst, roads grew shorter and distances were as nothing; the 
idols broke as he drew near, the devils fled, the possessed were 
freed, and the Child-God multiplied wonders around him 
which betrayed his Godhead. 


1 Matt. ii. 13. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


63 

History cannot accept these strange tales, and the Church 
has never sanctioned them. Ancient traditions, still current 
in the Coptic Church in Egypt, tell us that the holy family 
halted under the sycamores of Heliopolis, near the well of 
Matarea, and dwelt at first at the entry of Memphis, in old 
Cairo. There is still to be seen there a very ancient church, 
built in memory of the abode of Jesus; the Coptic Christians 
worship there, and do not fail to show visitors to the crypt 
the three arcades sacred to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. 

The flight into Egypt not only saved the threatened life 
of Jesus, but began to spread around and over him the silence 
and peace which were never again to be broken until the day 
of his great strife. The star of the wise men disappeared, 
the voices of the prophets were still, heaven was veiled, the 
humble family lost in the crowd ; the father and mother alone 
kept, as a hidden treasure, the mystery of Jesus. 

The following year, 750-751, Herod died; but Joseph, 
established with his own people in the Jewish colony of 
Memphis, was in no haste to return to Judaea. Warned by 
inspiration to go back to the land of Israel, he left Egypt with 
the child and his mother; but learning that Archelaus, the 
new king of Judaea, continued the oppressive and impious 
policy of his father, 1 he judged it prudent not to remain there. 

Galilee and Peraea were better ruled; they had as their 
tetrarch Antipas, 2 another son of Herod. This prince, who 
loved luxury, and was, moreover, of a kindly nature, had 
undertaken to build two towns, Tiberias and Julias, and he 
endeavoured, by the gentleness and liberality of his govern¬ 
ment, by the splendour of public edifices and many material 
advantages, to draw to himself the greatest possible number 
of inhabitants from the neighbouring provinces. 

1 Antiq. xvii. 9. 

a Antiq. xvii. 11. 


6 4 


JESUS CHRIST. 


It was revealed to Joseph in a dream that he was to retire 
to Galilee; he returned therefore to Nazareth, where he took 
up his abode. In this little province, so despised by the Jews 
that it was proverbially incapable of producing anything good, 
Jesus grew, unknown. He was to be called a Nazarene, 
a name 1 recalling an idea and expression familiar to the 
prophets when they spoke of the Messiah : “ Behold the man,” 
said Zechariah, “ whose name is The Branch ;” 2 and Jeremiah 
had already said: “ I will raise up to David a righteous 
Branch,” 3 and Isaiah, first of all, had seen “A Branch grow 
out of the roots of Jesse.” 4 

And, indeed, not out of the roots of Jesse and David, but 
out of the roots of the human race, no Branch ever flourished 
like unto Jesus of Nazareth. 5 

1 In Hebrew, Netzer\ branch, flower. 

2 Zechariah vi. 12. 

3 Jeremiah xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15. 

4 Isaiah xi. 1. 

6 The word used by Jeremiah and Zechariah is not Nelzer , but 
Tzemachj but the meaning is the same. 


CHAPTER IV. 


HISTORICAL NATURE OF THE MIRACULOUS NARRATIVES 
OF THE BIRTH AND INFANCY OF JESUS. 

/ 

The history of the birth of Jesus has a supernatural 
character which nothing can weaken or disguise. The 
personal intervention of God is at once its crown and 
support. The Divine Spirit took the sovereign initiative, 
revealed himself under different ways to the consciences 
of the elect, called them, commanded them, moved them 
at his pleasure, and they freely did his will. 

He who, in this unique instant of history, chooses to see 
only the play of forces of nature and mankind, will never 
penetrate the mystery of Christ; for he forgets God, the 
supreme motive force which subdues nature and mankind 
to associate them with his designs. 

All the opponents of the miraculous, partisans of 
exclusive science; rationalists, pantheists, materialists, 
positivists, or sceptics, strike out of history and treat as 
legends or poetical narratives the Gospel of the Infancy, 
as St. Matthew and St. Luke have delivered it to us; they 
see in these narratives only an ordinary event, embellished 
by sentiment and imagination, like all births of illustrious 
men in ancient times. The only historic fact, according to 
their system, can be stated in one line: Jesus was born in 
Palestine, in the reign of Augustus. 


66 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The most attentive and conscientious examination of the 
works in which this criticism is formulated cannot discover 
the least historical argument against the events which I have 
narrated according to original documents. The opposition 
which they raise is at bottom purely dogmatic. The documents 
suppose the personal and supernatual intervention of God, and, 
therefore, they find no favour in the presence of philosophic 
systems which suppress this intervention. Such a criticism 
has exactly the value of the systems which support it; now, 
these systems, in spite of favourable opinions, have no right to 
present themselves as the expression of the truth, for they 
can be convicted of error by reason itself; and I have always 
wondered how historians, whose duty it is to record duly- 
attested facts, can warp them so violently to their theories. 
This is surely to reverse the parts ; a fact resting on docu¬ 
ments is not open to discussion, while the theory is in a 
debatable land ; our philosophy cannot make facts to order, 
but it should be based on existing facts. 

The only fact of history against which reason can be 
invoked with success is one implying contradiction, or 
violating the principle of causality; a fact inconceivable and 
without a cause is repugnant to us ; it is not, and it cannot be. 
Philosophers who have called the Gospel narratives absurd 
have only judged them from the point of view of their systems, 
and not according to the essential and evident first principles 
of human reason. We must appeal to incorruptible reason 
against the tyranny of this criticism, so narrow, arbitrary, and 
violent, which falsifies history. 

In order that miracles may rightly take their place in history, 
they must be either conceivable, or be supported by trust¬ 
worthy witnesses. Now these are conceivable, since they have 
their sufficient reason in the power, wisdom, and goodness of 
God; the great point is whether they are certified by 
competent witnesses who attest them with conscientious 
sincerity. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


67 


No one can dispute the historic authority of the third 
Gospel, 1 to which we owe all the details of the conception 
and birth of Jesus. St. Luke, in his Prologue, explains his 
design in formal terms. 2 He does not collect vague and 
legendary traditions, with his eyes shut; but points out facts 
with care, which he has traced accurately from their very 
beginning, that he may write them in order, and teach 
Theophilus the truth of those things in which he had already 
been instructed. It cannot be supposed that this careful and 
conscientious writer deceived, or took advantage of the 
good faith of Theophilus and his other readers, by mixing 
fanciful, poetical, and legendary narratives with the real 
history. No impartial critic would maintain his right to 
reject such testimony and to deny the facts, for the simple 
reason that they overpassed the narrow circle of his own 
conceptions. A system of philosophy is not reason itself, 
but subject to controversy and may be erroneous ; while 
reason, in its fundamental principles, is infallible. The 
history of the birth of Jesus, according to the Gospels, may 
contradict a system ; but in it there is nothing which reason 
in its essential principles, is unable to receive. 

Some critics have tried to throw doubt on the authenticity 
of the two first chapters of St. Luke, but these have no true 
standing-point. Those chapters were announced in the Pro¬ 
logue : “ I have followed all with care from the very beginning,” 
wrote the author, 3 and they are in the earliest versions, as in 
the most ancient MSS. It is true that Marcion rejected them 
in the middle of the second century. He considered Christ a 
pure “ ^Eon,” superior to all the vicissitudes of birth, pain, and 
death, having only the appearance of humanity; therefore St. 
Justin, Tertullian, and Epiphanius accused Marcion of muti- 

1 See Introduction, p. xvi., &c. 

2 Luke i. 3, 4. 

3 Luke i. 3. 


68 


JESUS CHRIST. 


lating St. Luke. It is true, moreover, that the songs of Mary, 1 
Zacharias, 2 and Simeon, 3 are full of Hebraisms, and offer certain 
features of a Judaizing spirit, little in harmony with the 
Pauline character of the Gospel; but these features are rather 
unexpected proofs of authenticity, for they disclose the private 
sources by whose aid the author has edited the facts of half a 
century earlier, which were noted down under the feeling of 
the events themselves. The Jews who were contemporaries of 
St Luke no longer spoke and thought as pious families had 
done in the time of Zacharias and Simeon. 

Moreover, St. Luke was well situated for obtaining infor¬ 
mation about the Gospel history. We know from the Acts 
his intimate relations with St. Paul, his sojourn at Antioch, his 
own city, where he knew Barnabas, and at Caesarea, where he 
received the hospitality of Philip the Deacon ; and not to speak 
of his journey to Jerusalem, where he visited the apostles, it is 
evident that he must have known the mother of Jesus and the 
family of John the Baptist. Such was the source from which 
he drew the precious details he has handed down to us. 

Among these witnesses was one surpassing all others, 
Mary the mother of Jesus. According to St. Luke, 4 she 
kept in her heart the words she had heard, and the scenes in 
which she played the principal part. No one can believe that 
during the life or after the death of her Son, she kept her lips 
sealed, refusing to communicate to the disciples, her friends, 
the mysteries with which she had been associated. In her 
discretion, so delicately referred to by St. Luke, she knew 
indeed how to await the hour of God ; but when this hour had 
come she spoke, and in the third Gospel we have her own 
testimony. 

1 Luke i. 46, &c. 

2 Luke i. 68, &c. 

3 Luke ii. 29, &c. 

4 Luke ii. 19, 51. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


69 


If legends without historic authority, narratives inspired 
by the imagination and sentiment of the disciples, had formed 
around the birth of Jesus, his cradle and his childhood, it is 
not to be believed that no protest would have been raised and 
that the mother of Christ became, by her silence, the accomplice 
of these myths and poetic falsehoods. 

We must, however, draw attention to the sect of the 
Ebionites, in the bosom of the primitive Church, Jewish Chris¬ 
tians, obstinate adversaries of the new spirit of the Gospel, 
firm adherents of Jewish observances, slaves of the letter which 
kills, irreconcilable enemies of St. Paul, whose mission they 
opposed and whose anti-legal doctrine they abhorred. The 
Ebionites denied the conception and miraculous birth of Christ; 
but their denial has only given more weight to St. Luke’s 
narrative, whose express intention it was to declare, against 
all opponents, the truth of these divine facts. 

Beyond them only a single contradiction arose, in the 
ancient world, against the Gospel history of the birth of 
Jesus: an objection arising from the hate which ceaselessly 
pursued the work of Christ, 1 an outrage against the purity of 
the cradle of Jesus ; this objection and outrage were repeated 
by Celsus, 2 and they do not deserve the honour of a refutation 
from any high-minded person. The sanctity of the Gospel 
protests against so odious a calumny. We have seen it 
reappear in Germany in this century in several writers. 3 A 
French Jew 4 has dared to reproduce it without having 
succeeded any more than others in gaining credence for 
it, so scandalous and arbitrary is it, so improbable and 
shocking. 


1 Cf. Talmud. 

2 Origen, Contr. Cels. i. 30. 

3 Venturini; Barth, Die natur. Geburt Jes. v. Naz. Histor. bearbeitet. 

4 Salvador. 


70 


JESUS CHRIST. 


It is true that myth and legend sprang up profusely round 
the birth of Jesus as round the cradle of all those who have 
made a strong impression on the mind and heart of man; but 
these creations of fancy and sentiment need time and distance 
to produce them, when men and things are wrapped in 
shadow ; they shrink from the keen eye of witnesses and grow 
only on their tombs. If we wish to glean this growth, we 
must not seek it in the canonical Gospels, but in the many 
apocryphal writings of the second, third, fourth, and fifth 
centuries. 1 

If we compare these anonymous books with the text 
of the Gospels, the former are often puerile and absurd, full of 
marvels and inconceivable things ; the other is written quietly, 
yet precisely and vividly, all is grave and sober, positive and 
clear, persons are boldly drawn, the situations have nothing 
in them vague or incoherent, the speeches agree with the 
speakers ; the picture stands out in high relief, full of harmony 
and originality. 

There is nothing to recall the heathen fables of the 
suspicious intervention of gods and goddesses in the advent of 
heroes or great men ; nothing which denotes the Jewish mind 
so little open to the idea of virginity. The narrative of the 
virgin-birth of Jesus can only be explained by the reality; 
imagination does not thus dream and invent. 

It is impossible not to smile at the way in which the 
mythical school has looked at the formation of all this history. 
The proceeding is simple and summary; if any occurrence 
presents a point of contact with the Old Testament, there is 
the nucleus round which the legend has formed; if, for 
instance, in Isaiah, there is a virgin who conceives, the word, 
by “ epigenesis,” has created the legend of the Annunciation. 
The Star of Balaam has in the same way given rise to the star 
of the Magi, thanks to the ingenious comparison of a verse in 

1 Cf. in Apocryphal Diet., i. I, Edn. Migne: The Gospel of the 
Ijifancy , &c. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


7 1 


the book of Numbers, 1 with a verse in a Psalm, saying that 
the kings of Arabia and Sheba should bring presents to the 
Deliverer of Israel. 2 The mother of Samuel chanted a hymn 
of thanks; 3 the mother of Jesus must therefore chant hers, 
and so on. The Old Testament and mythology are the mine 
from which legend springs; the pious fancy of the faithful 
is the artist that shapes it; the Church, at once dupe and 
accomplice, is the ground in which it is propagated. 

When there are no points of contact with the Old Testa¬ 
ment, these writers search profane history. To explain the 
presence of the shepherds at the birth of Jesus, we are to 
remember the Graeco-Roman myths of Romulus and Remus, 
nurtured by the guardians of the flocks. It is strange that 
the world has waited for eighteen hundred years to see clearly 
the meaning of the Gospel narrative of the birth of Jesus. 
This poetic and mythical explanation inspires no confidence; 
it comes too late, and has too much the air of an expedient 
invented to solve the difficulty of those whom miracle 
offends. 

Again, we are unable to get at these narratives in their de¬ 
velopments and genesis, nor can we name the authors of those 
fancies, of which we admire the beauty, the divine meaning, 
and the ideal freshness ; but there is nothing, no document, no 
fact, always arbitrary and often unlikely hypotheses. The 
figures of the Old Testament, the Christian sentiment mixed 
with Messianic hopes, the need of glorifying Christ so loved 
and lost to sight, this has all that has worked magically on the 
popular conscience. 

The Gospels affirm in several places that the mother of 
Jesus kept in her heart and pondered the words she had heard, 
and the scenes she had witnessed: this element has been 


1 Numbers xxiv. 17. 

2 Psalm lxxii. 

8 I. Sam. ii. I. 


72 


JESUS CHRIST. 


neglected ; it is however essential, and no historian has the right 
to pass it by. Indeed, it is natural we should see her record 
in the Gospel narrative. Mothers remember better than any¬ 
one else; their tenderness never forgets, all which has to do 
with 'the child which they have borne, nursed, and educated, is 
deeply graven on their souls. 

The mythical school has thus attempted to treat as of no 
account this sublime history, by lowering it to the level of 
Greek fables and Hindoo dreams. This school has reminded 
us that it was told of Plato that he was born of intercourse 
between the god Apollo and Perictione, his mother; that 
Romulus was said to have been the son of Mars, and Caesar 
the descendant of Venus ; if God were made man in Christ, a 
Buddhist sect tells us of the seven incarnations of Krishna; 
and Sakya-Muni, the reformer of Brahmanism, became a god, 
according to the Buddhist sacred books. A virgin goddess 
too, assisted at his earthly birth, and, at this very day, the 
chief of the Buddhist hierarchy, at Thibet, is declared to be an 
incarnate deity. Far from weakening the Gospel history, these 
comparisons justify it; they bear witness to a universal aspira¬ 
tion which cannot be deceived, for it has God for principle, 
and wishes inspired by God are the prophecy of what will be. 
The general tendency of men to make God intervene in the 
genesis of great minds, found its perfect object only in the 
genesis of Jesus. 

The most moderate among the adversaries of the his¬ 
torical character of the Gospels, troubled by the supernatural 
with which their pages are full; the intervention of God, 
the apparition of angels, dreams which reveal truth, and 
prophetic discourses ; have affected to distinguish the matter 
from the form. The form is only a poetic veil, artistically 
woven by the first Christians to clothe the idea of the 
divine nature of Christ Jesus. This dogma, which, accord¬ 
ing to the teaching and idea of all the apostolic writers, 
undoubtedly occupies the most important place, has been 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


73 


formulated, according to the critics, at the pleasure of the sur¬ 
roundings and of the time in a way by turns vague or precise, 
popular or learned, poetic or theological; and here we have 
the poetic and popular formula. The matter only is important; 
the form may be considered from an aesthetic point of view, 
but we must not press it too closely. 1 

This timid system sacrifices to no purpose the historical 
nature of the facts, the reality concealed under the formula of 
the dogma; it commits, moreover, a grave error when it sees 
in this formula a truth which is not necessarily and logically 
contained in it. Indeed it is not the “divine nature” of Jesus 
which is taught there,but his “divine origin.” Jesus might be 
God and man without being thus conceived ; he might also 
be thus conceived without being God and man. In truth, 
according to Catholic theology, he was born of the Holy 
Ghost and possessed, in the unity of the same person, the 
nature of God and the nature of man ; but these two facts 
are not necessarily derived one from the other, and therefore 
we cannot see in the narrative of the first the formula which 
indicates or expresses the second. 

We shall seek in vain in all literature, sacred or profane, a 
page wherein poetry and history, the ideal and the real, the 
human and the divine, are raised to a higher pitch or are 
in more perfect accord. Everything in these narratives 
holds together; details agree with the general conception 
to form a complete and beautiful whole. The features 
furnished by St. Matthew add to the history of St. Luke 
and enlarge its horizon. The mysterious star seems to 
indicate that astronomical revolutions, measuring out the 
life of the universe, are in accord with the transforma¬ 
tions of our little world; and these mysterious chiefs, coming 
from the East, from a heathen land, allow us to suspect 

1 Reuss, Histoire Evangelique. Sabatier, Encyclop. des Sciences re- 
ligieusesy art. Jesus Christ. 


74 


JESUS CHRIST. 


that the hopes of a Saviour were not the exclusive patri¬ 
mony of one race, and that his action might extend to the 
whole race of man. 

Jesus is the Son of God, but he was born in a stable, like a 
poor infant; none recognised him but the Jewish shepherds, 
but all heaven rejoiced over his cradle in the night wherein 
he was born. For one moment, when the wise men came, the 
royal town was moved, but scarcely had that earthly glory 
shone when danger threatened the child, and he was obliged 
to flee, and the blood of those who were born at the 
same time flowed in streams upon the land where he was 
persecuted. 

All these contrasts were to continue in the life of Christ 
and in his work through the ages, in the bosom of the Church 
founded by him. They reflect and prolong the great and 
fundamental antithesis in which the mystery of Jesus consists, 
and which St. John expressed in one sentence, “ The Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us.” 1 Legend knows no such 
harmony as this; its incoherent dreams not only shock proba¬ 
bility, but offend reason; it takes delight in what is arbitrary 
and allegorical, marvellous and eccentric. In the full 
tide of paganism it lent to its gods the weakness and 
passions of men ; in the times which have followed Christianity 
it ascribes to God himself the fancies of the human brain. 
Put, if you will, in the same rank, the apocryphal Gospels 
and the mythology of Greeks, Romans, and Hindoos, together 
with the wonders in the history of Mahomet; but independent 
criticism cannot thus treat the canonical Gospels and the 
history of the childhood of Jesus. 

The discourses mixed with these facts help to substantiate 
them and declare their divine character. The spirit of prophecy 
awoke and took up the great tradition of departed seers, 

1 John i. 14. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


7 5 


breaking the narrow circle in which Jewish piety was stifling, 
it passed the barriers of that blind formalism, wherein the 
doctors and chiefs of religion held thought and religious 
sentiment enslaved. The ancient promises of God were 
understood in their grandeur ; the throne of David was to be 
restored, but the Son of God was to occupy it, in a kingdom 
without end ; Israel was to be consoled and saved, but those 
who were sitting in darkness and death, the Gentiles, if left 
for a while, were not forgotten ; not Israel was to reign, but 
God, the bowels of whose mercy were to yearn for every 
creature. 

The popular conscience was no more able to receive 
these inspirations, than the conscience of the doctors and 
priests. All must be blind who do not see there the 
wonderful sign of the Spirit and of the Word of God. 
The word of man, however great he be, cannot attain to this 
sublimity and clear vision, dig for itself a way to the heart of 
mankind, penetrate the future with such certainty, and grave 
itself in the memory of men so profoundly, that, after many 
centuries, we find it still eager and still alive on the lips of 
those who adore and pray, who suffer, love, and hope. This 
is an intrinsic mark of historical character which the Gospel 
alone possesses, and which keeps inviolable, above all suspicion, 
the pages relating to the childhood of Jesus. 


CHAPTER V. 


CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS. HIS EDUCATION. 

The life of Jesus as a child and youth at Nazareth is 
comprised in two words: he grew and obeyed ; 1 he obeyed 
his father and mother ; he grew in wisdom and stature, and in 
favour with God and man. There is nothing extraordinary, 
nothing marvellous, nothing apparently which transcends 
the laws of human nature. His physical development 
was like that of all children, and, from year to year, he 
showed the intelligence and virtue, the power and charm 
belonging to his age. No obstacles stood in the way of his 
perfect growth ; when the passions wake they are tumultuous 
and unruly, so as to trouble the harmony of man’s being, but 
in the soul of Jesus they were duly balanced. Evil, in any 
form, did not even touch him who was born holy , 2 and in whom 
dwelt all the fulness of God . 3 

Matter in him was penetrated by the soul which subdued 
and transfigured it, and the soul by the Spirit of God which 
filled and rendered it divine. No psychology can take 
account of the light of God in the soul of Jesus, and science 
can never comprehend all the beauty of his body as it moved 
and grew under the rays and impulses of a soul wholly wrapt 
in the breath and power of the Infinite. He was the ideal 
child and youth as, later, he was to be the ideal man 


1 Luke ii. 51, 52. 

2 Luke i. 35. 

3 Coloss. ii. 9. 



Looking toward the east, the mountains of Moab in the distance. 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































J 
















THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


77 


Between him and the sons of earth there is this difference; 
the best of us aspire to a perfection which they never attain, 
he realised its absolute type . 1 The total and personal union 
of the human and divine natures gave him the intuition 
of infinite truth, the possession of infinite love, the uninter¬ 
rupted enjoyment of infinite beauty ; 2 but this did not 
interfere with the development of experimental knowledge in 
his reason , 3 the progressive exercise of virtue, the effort of 
the will, the fatigues of the body, labour and pain. These 
are inseparably united with earthly manhood, which Jesus 
took on him with all its weakness, its sorrows, and its 
mortality ; his union with God only gave him freedom from 
sin and imperfection. 

The most diverse moods may exist at the same time in 
the soul, without exclusion and destruction one of the other: 
intuition is compatible with experimental knowledge, divine 
joy may be allied with untold anguish, and violent struggle 
with unalterable calm. 

Jesus was brought up, like all the Galilaeans of his age, 
in the little town of Nazareth. As a child he took part in 
childish games ; as a young man he had to mix with his 
companions, and live their life ; he astonished them by his 
wisdom, goodness radiated from him, the charm of sweet 
and humble souls. 

Nothing less resembled our modern education than that of 
a young Israelite, in Judaea, in the time of Herod. Public 
schools play a large part among us, in taking the children 
from the paternal home, from the tenth to the twentieth 
year, to give him over to a master ; but the system did not yet 
exist among the Jews. Jerusalem alone had a popular school 
which was called “ Beth-Hassepher,” the House of the Book. 

1 Cf. Thomas : Summ., 3 P., Qu. xv. 

2 Cf. id. id. 3 P., Qu. xv., art. 10. 

3 Cf. id. id. 3 P., Qu. xii. 


78 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Founded a century before Jesus by the Pharisee Simon ben 
Schetoh, 1 it became the model of those which, about the 
year 64, were founded in all towns and villages, by order of 
the high priest Jesus ben Gamala. 2 The Jewish child was 
educated in his father’s house, in the synagogue, and the 
workshop. In the house he received the counsels of his 
father and mother ; in the synagogue he learned to read the 
Torah ; in the workshop he learned a trade. 

Domestic education among the Jews was exclusively re¬ 
ligious and patriotic, and concentrated on the Law, morals, and 
history; its intention was to form the conscience and engrave 
upon it the Law of God, fidelity to its precepts and love of the 
nation ; it was honoured and obeyed among this people, 
which more than any other adhered to tradition. By domestic 
education, patriotism was kindled in the soul of the child; from 
the heart of the father and mother it drew, with the fear of 
God, the knowledge of the divine commands, and was initiated 
into the religious spirit of Israel and its great destinies. 

Education was imposed on parents as a sacred duty. The 
first-born child was for them the first-fruits of the father’s 
strength, 3 and a sign of God’s blessing; a family without children 
seemed to them neglected or accursed ; hence there was a tie 
between parents and children which has given to Israelitish 
families a consistency unknown to the Gentiles. The Roman 
had the right of killing, disinheriting, and abandoning his 
children; the Jew was bound by his religion to watch over the 
greatest interest of the family and the nation, which held 
their glory to consist in the number and the piety of their 
descendants. 

The Hebrew legislator never ceased to exhort the father 
to instruct his son, at home, at meals, and in travelling, in the 
commandments and blessings of God ; and, on the other 

1 Talmud Hierosol., Ketouboth, viii. 11. 

2 Talmud Babyl ., Bababathra , 21, c. 

3 Deut. xxi. 17. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


79 


hand, he ordered children to honour their parents. This 
precept comes in the Law immediately after the duty towards 
God ; obedience was to be blessed, disobedience punished 
with death. We may read, in the Proverbs, 1 the exhortation 
addressed by the Wisdom of God to the child, to hear the 
instructions of his father and not reject the teaching of 
his mother. No domestic morality breathes greater tender¬ 
ness and respect. 

The dwelling in which Jesus grew up was like those of the 
Arabs in Palestine at the present day. The type of the 
Oriental house has not changed for centuries; it is square, of 
brick or stone, the walls are often only of concrete, covered 
with stiff clay, sun-dried and whitewashed. The roof is a 
terrace surmounted by a balustrade, and is reached by a 
movable ladder or a staircase fixed to the wall. There is the 
guest-chamber, and the place of prayer; and there, during 
the hot season, a little hut of leaves or reeds is erected for 
sleeping in at night. 

The house has but one or two rooms, and often no other 
opening than the door; in front is a narrow court, surrounded 
by a wall of loose stones, or dry faggots. In one of the angles 
of the court, near the door, is the baking-oven, a little round 
building of clay, closed by a movable cover ; and the pebbles 
on which the dough is spread form the base. 

The furniture is primitive; a few stools, a table, cushions 
strewed along the wall, mattresses and mats, a chandelier, an 
oil-lamp in a corner of the wall, a large coffer for linen and 
clothes, a meal-tub, a few urns, and a basalt mortar for the 
grain. The chimney, or rather the hearth, is sometimes 
placed in the middle of the room; at the door of each 
dwelling is a little oblong box, the “Mezuzzah,” enclosing a 
roll of parchment on which are written two portions of the 
Law, taken from Deuteronomy. 2 

1 Prov. i. 8 ; iv. io, et passim. 

2 Deut. vi. 5-19; xi. 13-20 


8o 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The carpenter’s shop was the first and true school of 
Jesus ; there he grew up beside his father and mother, learned 
of them to read the Scriptures, and heard from their mouth 
the precepts of the Law and the history of his people. This 
child, who felt and knew himself to be the Son of the 
Heavenly Father, deigned to receive from an earthly father 
and mother the orders and instructions of God, and to be 
initiated, like all children, into human life and knowledge. 1 

Jesus was the first-born and only son of his mother ; 
those whom the Gospel calls his brothers and sisters, were in 
fact his maternal cousins, whose father was Cleophas, and 
their mother, Mary, sister of the mother of Jesus ; 2 they 
were of the same family, the same tribe, the same blood as he, 
and he lived in their midst. The relations of Jesus do not 
appear to have been aware of the hopes which rested on his 
head and shone in secret in the home of Joseph and Mary. 
After those great manifestations of God, shadow and mystery 
rested on the predestined youth, while, in submission to his 
human state, he followed all its laws. Faith alone, illuminated 
by ineffable memories and the daily spectacle of perfect 
virtue, showed the parents of Jesus that he was extraordinary 
and divine. 

They recited the Psalms together, praying for the redemp¬ 
tion of Israel and the salvation of the nations, and Joseph and 
Mary must often have looked on the face of Jesus to read 
therein the designs of God, the stern ways which his wisdom 
would follow in the accomplishment of the great work. They 
loved them well, without yet knowing them ; God only gives 
his light at the moment ordained ; souls which live in him give 
themselves up to his Providence, repressing their eager desire, 
and waiting with calmness till the day of God shall dawn. 

But, for us, this life of the holiest of all families, this 
mystery of Nazareth, remains concealed. 

1 Cf. Thomas Aqu., Summ. 3 P., Qu. xii., art 3. 

2 Matt. xiii. 55 ; xxvii. 56. Mark vi. 3; xv. 40 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


8l 


The young Israelite was wont to complete his education 
in the synagogue, and, from the time of Ezra, each village had 
its own, often a simple chamber without ornament or architec¬ 
ture, pointing towards the sacred city. In a press concealed 
by a bright-coloured curtain, to represent the veil of the 
Temple, the Torah was deposited. A lamp, like those in our 
churches, was always burning before the roll of parchment on 
which it was written. In the midst of the hall was the pulpit, 
from which seven readers, three times every week; the Sabbath, 
Monday, and Thursday; read passages from the Law, and a 
portion of the Prophets. Then the reader interpreted, in the 
Aramaean tongue, the verses which had been read; and the 
president, or someone appointed by him, recited the final 
benedictions, to which the people, standing and turning towards 
the distant Temple, answered “Amen” in a loud voice. On 
benches covered with mats or cushions, along the walls or 
around the pulpit, the congregation, their heads covered with 
the “ taleth,” and clad in long tasselled cloaks, were seated, 
praying in a low voice, rocking their bodies and heads in 
measured time. The women, apart from the men, often stood 
at the door, their little children in their arms, following the 
prayers in silence. 

Jesus and his relatives were often present in the synagogue 
of Nazareth; they came there on the Sabbath and the other 
appointed days ; as pious Israelites, they had to pray there in 
the morning, at midday, and in the evening. Those who 
wished to read the Law, were accustomed to sit before the 
press wherein the copies were kept, and the “Hasan’ gave 
them the sacred roll. Probably Jesus came often in his youth 
to pray there and meditate on the word of God so full of him, 
and of which he alone was one day to reveal the mystery. 
Seated in the synagogue, his head veiled, the sacred rolls 
on his knees, he might read in the Scriptures his own destiny 


82 


JESUS CHRIST. 


written beforehand by the prophets, might follow the evolu¬ 
tion of the plan of God for mankind, to admire the work of 
salvation, and prepare himself in silence, unknown to all, to 
accomplish his Father’s will. 

But no rabbi could claim him as a disciple, he in whom 
God dwelt could have no master ; 1 his only and true master 
was the living God. We only now and then hear the word of 
God far off, like a feeble echo, through a thousand noises 
which often confuse it; Jesus heard it always and without 
effort, full, vibrating, clear, direct ; it was the well-spring 
of treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in him ; 2 it 
was his own genius. 

Syro-Chaldaean was the mother-tongue of Jesus ; 3 it does 
not appear that he spoke Greek. Hellenic culture had not 
penetrated the Jewish population in Palestine, and in any case 
the people only felt its influence feebly. 

In the public assemblies of the synagogue, Jesus knew also 
by experience the poverty, the perversions, errors, and empty 
knowledge of the doctors of his time ; he saw the vain¬ 
glorious who sought the first places ; 4 and heard the narrow 
and haughty Pharisees. After eighteen hundred years, the 
Pharisee may be found in the synagogue of modern Jerusalem, 
just as Jesus saw him ; the same arrogant air, the same hard 
and disdainful eye ; he feels himself a being apart; he is the 
master; he believes that all knowledge is his ; he may answer 
questions, but he has nothing to learn ; he holds his Bible as if 

1 Coloss. ii. 9. 

2 Coloss. ii. 3. 

3 Though in the time of Jesus classical Hebrew was a dead language, 
it was familiar to the Jews. The people spoke Syro-Chaldaean, a dialect 
which was, to the old Hebrew tongue, what modern is to ancient Greek, 
and Italian to Latin. 

The popular dialect was divided into three branches : the Judaic, 
nearest to primitive Hebrew ; the Samaritan, somewhat mixed with 
Chaldaean ; and the Syriac. 

The Galilaeans were distinguished by their accent, which did not 
pronounce the gutturals. 

4 Matt, xxiii. 6. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


33 

it were his God, and as though he had the monopoly of God. 
The earliest impressions of youth are never blotted out; in 
Jesus, as in us, they help us to comprehend the intentions, the 
words, and the acts, of riper age. 

The Jew, in his education, did not neglect the worldly 
and practical side : every Israelite, of whatever rank, had 
to learn a trade. “ On the father lies the task,” says the 
Talmud, “to circumcise his son, to instruct him in the Law, 
and teach him a craft.” 1 In this the Talmud summed up the 
tradition of Jewish manners. Those who gave no profession 
to their children neglected a great duty; it is, as one of the 
Targums says, to teach them to steal; 2 and it sums up all 
the positive and industrious feeling of the race. The Jew has 
never known the indolence, laziness, and the gentle resignation 
arising out of fatalism, which astonishes the European in the 
fellahs of Palestine. Work is sacred for him, and* trade 
an honour, even among the most illustrious rabbis: Hillel 
and Aquiba, two of the greatest, were wood-cutters; Rabbi 
Johanan was a shoemaker; Rabbi Isaac Nanacha a black¬ 
smith. Jesus, the son of a workman, was a carpenter, like 
Joseph his father; he grew up in the shop and in work. He 
made, as Justin says, wooden implements, ploughs, yokes, and 
scales ; he aided his father, and lived by the work of his hands 
as a simple artizan. 

The true Master of men was to come from a small work- 
shop. He remained, while waiting till his hour was come, the 
model of humble men, of those whose name is unknown to 
history, who live obscure and undiscovered, under the eye of 
God. The years of their life succeed each other mono¬ 
tonously, all is silent in them ; sorrow and joy, work and 
virtue. The majority of men live thus; and it is not one of 
the least forces of Christianity that it can present for 
the imitation of the people a workman-Christ, devoted, in 

1 Tosaphot , in Kiddujchin , ch i. 

2 Talmud Babyl ., in Kidduschin , 29. 


84 JESUS CHRIST. 

his childhood and youth, to daily labour, like the greater 
part of men. 

The workshop, among the Jews, was not in the house ; the 
tradesmen had their stalls in the bazaar ; the artizan had his 
bench near his dwelling. The wife took care of the home, 
where she lived in retirement, while the husband and child 
went forth to work. She ground the wheat, prepared the 
food, spun the wool and wove garments, went to draw 
water from the well and buy her provisions at the market 
The family assembled at the hours of prayer and at meals ; 
on Sabbaths and feast-days at the synagogue. These details 
make the whole external life of the cottage at Nazareth and 
of the family of Jesus. 

We cannot understand his physiognomy and character, 
if, while we study his childhood and youth, we neglect the 
natural surroundings in the midst of which he grew. Man 
is attached to the soil of his birth by ties so strict as 
always to leave their impress. 

We always resemble our native land; our imagination takes 
the tints of the heaven in which our sight loses itself; the 
highest are those in which echo profoundest harmonies with 
the nature in which they develop. A great writer’s style 
reflects the melancholy of the shores by which he dreamed to 
the sound of the wave ; a man of action recalls the craggy hills 
among which he was born, and the torrents that leapt from 
them. Whoever has not long gazed on the heaven of the 
East, Palestine, the mountains of Nazareth, the Lake of 
Tiberias, will never understand the outward frame of Jesus, the 
tone of his thoughts, the images in which he loved to clothe 
them, and the originality of his parables. 

Through long years he read in the country round 
Nazareth as though in the book of God ; there he admired 
the anemones, the lilies, the tufts of asphodel, 1 and the fig-tree 

1 Matt. vi. 28; Luke xii. 27. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


85 


which gave its first fruit in the spring; 1 there he saw the corn 
grow white, 2 and the vine pruned in order that it might be 
more fruitful ; 3 there the lost sheep 4 and the flocks brought 
back to the fold ; there he saw the shy jackal gain its hole, 5 
the eagles and the vultures gathering to devour their prey; 6 
there he saw the sun grow red at morning and evening, a 
sign of fair weather or of storm, 7 and the torrents come down 
in flood-time to carry away the ill-built house. 8 

We shall seek in vain a corner of the world more tranquil 
and sweet, more hidden and full of light, more retired and 
yet more open. If we climb one of the hills which surround 
the little town, that for example which looks at the present 
day over the Wady Nabi-Said, the spectacle is almost bound¬ 
less. On the north are the high mountains of Galilee, and 
behind them, against the sky, the solitary peak of greater Her- 
mon, always sparkling with snow. To the east Tabor raises 
its proud summit, and the mountain chain of Ajalon ex¬ 
tends its verdant slope. To the south, Little Hermon, the 
mountains of Gilboa, of Samaria, and, on the extreme horizon 
the sharp summits of Judaea. Close at hand extends the plain 
of Esdraelon, in bands of grey and yellow, like a Persian carpet 
on which the clouds make patches of deep violet. To the 
west are the blue outlines of Carmel and the sea. The whole 
world seems to spread out under the eye, and we like to 
picture Jesus to ourselves on this summit, praying to his 
heavenly Father, and contemplating the broad land, as the 
territory which one day he was to conquer and enrich. 

The Gospel documents say nothing about the long years 

1 Song of Solomon ii. 13. 

2 John iv. 35. 

3 John xv. 2. 

4 Luke xv. 4-6 ; John x. I, &c. 

6 Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58. 

6 Matt. xxiv. 28 ; Luke xvii. 37. 

7 Matt. xvi. 3. 

8 Matt. vii. 27 ; Luke vi. 49. 


86 


JESUS CHRIST. 


of Jesus at Nazareth. St. Luke has characterised their general 
outline by a few hints; but it was the intention of God that 
his Christ should remain hidden. 

One incident alone allows us to see what was passing in the 
soul and conscience of the youthful Jesus. The twelfth year 
marked a solemn period in the life of the young Israelite; 
from that age he was treated as a man, he was responsible 
for his own acts, and ceased his pupilage ; he became a 
member of the community of Israel, and engaged himself to 
fulfil faithfully the commandments of the Law. The Roman 
put on the toga virilis at the age of fourteen; the young 
Israelite had already become the son of the Torah ; he began 
to bear the phylacteries on his forehead and arms, in religious 
ceremonies, according to the precepts of Moses; 1 he had to 
fast on penitential days; and at the great feasts, the Passover, 
Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, to make a pilgrimage 
to Jerusalem. 

Jesus had attained the age of twelve. He had been 
presented by his father in the synagogue at Nazareth, had 
become a member of the community, and the phylacteries 2 
had been given to him, as to all those of his age, on the 
Sabbath-Tephillin. His parents, like all pious Jews, made 
each year, at the feast of the Passover, their journey to 
Jerusalem. 3 He went with them ; as his first step in life after 
his years of childhood, and his first public act of submission 
to the Law. 

These pilgrimages to the Holy City and the Temple 
formed a feature of Jewish national and religious life. At the 
three most solemn feasts, long caravans frequented the four 
roads which led to Jerusalem : that of Egypt by the desert, 

1 Deut. xi. 18. 

2 These wetfe little parchment bands fastened by straps to the arms and 
head, with two passages from Deut., vi. 4-5 ; xi. 1-21 ; and two others, 
from Exodus, xiii. 1 10, 11-16. 

3 Luke ii. 41, &c. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


87 

Gaza and Hebron ; that of Peraea, by the Valley of the 
Jordan, Jericho, Bethany, and the Mount of Olives ; that which 
came from the west by Joppa; and that of the country of 
Damascus, the Hauran, Lebanon, and Syria by Sichem. 

From all the towns of Judaea and the Holy Land, the 
smallest villages and the most remote districts, and by every 
gate, thousands of pilgrims were wont to come. Josephus 
estimates the crowd which choked the streets and suburbs of 
Jerusalem at the Passover, at no less than two millions. 1 
They chanted psalms upon their march; and had their fixed 
halting-places ; the Galilaeans, who came through Samaria, 
preferred to stop beyond Sichem, and the well of Jacob, at 
Ain-el-Haramieh, the last stage before Jerusalem. At this spot 
the valley closes in, and forms a semicircle ; the path merges 
into the dry bed of a torrent which is only filled after a 
storm. On one side is a rock from which springs a fountain ; 
on the other, the hill in terraces, like the sides of an amphi¬ 
theatre : it is a wild and solitary place, and full of melan¬ 
choly. The pious Israelites often woke the echoes by their 
songs and their impatient desire to see at last Jerusalem, and 
the House of the Lord. 

“ As the hart panteth after the water brooks,” they sang, 
“ so panteth my soul after thee, O God. When shall I come 
to appear before God ? ” 2 

After a two-hours’ march they came at last to Mount 
Scopus, to a place now called Naschevat, whence the Holy 
City suddenly appeared like a radiant vision; the Temple 
with its golden roof covered Mount Moriah ; on Zion rose 
the palace of Herod and those of the high priests; all the 
domes shone white in the rising sun ; sixty towers rose upon 
the walls, like giant sentinels round the city of the great King 
Scopus, with one summit crowned by Nabi Samuel, forms a 
semicircle of rocks and stones, grey and desolate, severely 

1 Joseph., Bell.Jud vi. 9, 3. 

2 Ps. xlii. 1. 


83 


JESUS CHRIST. 


framing the Holy City to the north ; the Mount of Olives rises 
to the east, covered with cypresses, cedars, and other sombre 
trees; on the horizon to the south, quite close, is the undulating 
chain of the mountains of Bethlehem, and in the far distance 
the hills of Moab faded into the sky. The sight of Jerusalem 
filled the pilgrims with unspeakable emotion, and they chanted, 
to express it, the Psalm of Degrees, “ How goodly are thy 
tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts ! ” 

Jesus and the caravan of Nazareth passed by this road at 
the Passover of 760 or 762. The feast lasted eight days, from 
the 14th to the 21st of Nisan (April). The approaches to the 
Temple, the porches, and the courts were encumbered by the 
multitude which came to pray and offer sacrifice to Jehovah. 
The priests immolated the victims ; the people cried aloud for 
the redemption of Israel ; the doctors, the Pharisees, and the 
scribes discussed the Law, commented on its precepts, and 
taught their traditions. 

Jerusalem, at that time, was not only the city of worship, but 
one of the great centres of religious knowledge. Two opposite 
schools divided men’s minds ; that of Hillel and that of Sham- 
mai; the one, the more tolerant and liberal, exalted the moral 
portion of the Law, and declared it more important than the 
ritual; the other, narrow and scrupulous, laid stress upon the 
letter, and wished to impose it upon all, exaggerating by a 
thousand details the weary burthen of the Mosaic tradition. 

The arrival of rabbis from a distance would increase the 
animation of the opposing doctors and their disciples; the 
ardent and bitter discussions, under the Porch of the Gentiles, 
at “ Beth-Midrash,” where the masters came together. 

Probably at the very place where stands the basilica built 
by Justinian in honour of the Virgin Mary, occurred the events 
of which St. Luke preserves the record. 1 The feast was 
ended ; the caravans were quitting Jerusalem ; that of the 


1 Luke ii. 41. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


89 

Nazarenes, in which were the parents of Jesus, was on the way 
towards Samaria. It had arrived at the first stage, Bireh, 
not far from Bethel, where Jacob had the vision of the 
mysterious ladder, and where Samuel came every year to 
judge the people. In the evening Joseph and Mary perceived 
that Jesus was not with them in the caravan. They returned 
to Jerusalem seeking him ; and, after three days, they found 
him in the Temple, at the “ Beth-Midrash,” seated in the midst 
of the doctors, hearing them, asking them questions, and 
answering them; and all that heard him were astonished at 
his understanding and answers. 

Those who know the manners of the East, and have seen 
the Jewish synagogues or the Moslem mosques, at the hour of 
teaching, will not wonder at this scene. A circle is made 
round the doctors, all sit on mats, listening, asking, answering, 
by turns ; young and old are seated side by side, the teachers 
and the disciples with their legs crossed, on the same carpet, 
and all may speak. History does not tell us, but we may easily 
guess the questions of Jesus and his answers. 

He who was to proclaim himself as the Son of God and 
the expected Messiah, to preach the Sermon on the Mount, 
to show the emptiness of Jewish observances, to bring to all 
the Spirit of Salvation, must have showed some ray of the 
infinite wisdom with which he was filled. If human genius 
always reveals itself, the divine wisdom of Christ must have 
done the same. What is really surprising is the shade 
in which Jesus remained so long voluntarily hidden. And 
when they saw him thus admired by the most celebrated 
teachers and by the crowd, his parents “were amazed: and his 
mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with 
us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. 
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me ? wist 
ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” 1 


1 Luke ii. 48, 49. 


90 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The mind of Jesus is revealed for the first time in this 
mysterious speech: his whole self was there in its fulness, with 
his title of divine sonship, his sovereign initiative, his heavenly 
vocation; his life, in its smallest detail, would be only the 
accomplishment of this that was spoken in his twelfth year. 
Neither Mary nor Joseph understood all its depth. Jesus 
went down with them to Nazareth, where he resumed his 
humble and laborious existence, waiting for his manifestation, 
the call of God. 

Man is rather carried away by, than masters, his genius, he 
submits to circumstances rather than directs them, he declares 
and reveals himself unconsciously; in Jesus all obeyed the 
will of the Father ; for thirty years, except for the renown of 
this scene under the Porch of the Gentiles, he was to live 
unknown, his countrymen would hardly notice him, and the 
Nazarene would only attract attention, perhaps, by the beauty 
which superhuman grace and charm gave to his person. 

Contemporary documents have left us no portrait of Jesus. 
Some doctors, insisting too much on the letter of a passage in 
Isaiah describing the persecuted .servant of Jehovah, 1 have 
denied him beauty. If the face of man reflects the invisible 
soul, Jesus must have been the fairest among the sons of men. 
The light of God, veiled by the shadow of pain, must have 
enlightened his brow with a gentle splendour which human 
art can never paint. 

The Greeks, masters of aesthetics, have given to Jesus 
divine majesty; the Latins, the moving aspect of the Man 
of Sorrow : he has thus at once the aureole and the nimbus ; 
the aureole of a martyr and the nimbus of a God. 


1 Isaiah IL 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE VOCATION OF JESUS. 

The life of every exalted personage is explained by his 
destiny, and his destiny by his nature and character; 
but the final word rests with him who guides life, commands 
destiny, creates nature, and inspires character. The relations 
between God and his messengers have always some mystery, 
the more profound as the character is deeper, and the action 
of God more powerful and vast; they resist all analysis. 

In revealing himself his ineffable relation to God, his 
vocation and nature, his work and person, Jesus sketched his 
own living and faithful portrait, and explained his life. 
The mistrustful spirit which criticises such a witness, and 
lowers all that is transcendent to its own narrow formula, can 
never understand Jesus, but only disfigure him and travesty 
him. In order to understand beings who are above us, we 
must believe in and love them ; faith and love have intuitions 
higher than intellect, however clear-sighted. Among all the 
disciples of the Master, he who has recorded his most intimate 
confidences, he who loved him best, has given us the most 
divine likeness of him. 

The soul of man has three centres: God, nature, and 
humanity; and the greatest of these is God. The more a 
life is concentrated in him, the stronger it is, and the holier. 
This world was, for Jesus, the means by which he entered into 
contact with mankind, his field of action; his true life was 
neither in the world nor in mankind, but in God. 

13 


92 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Man is united to God, as the supreme object of his intel¬ 
ligence and will, by the act of his higher faculties. By 
knowing and loving him man clings to him ; by obeying his 
law he becomes the servant of God. This union, so full of 
sweetness and charm, is as accidental and precarious as the 
ties which form it: knowledge is abstract, love weak and 
sapped by selfishness, obedience uncertain ; the most perfect 
men fail and fall under the slavery of nature and the woes of 
mankind. 

Christian faith uses a mysterious phrase for the union 
which binds man to God, in Christ; calling it a substantial and 
personal union. The human and divine natures were both in 
him without confusion, hypostatically united in the person of 
the Word. Jesus was, without metaphor, in the most pro¬ 
found and truest sense, the only Son of God ; and thus he 
is without an equal in mankind. 

He was conscious of his divine sonship; in him was no con¬ 
fused sentiment of the divine, such as characterises mystical 
natures, and by which they vaguely perceive the hidden 
relation which binds every creature to the infinite cause, it was 
a luminous and vivid consciousness of the personal God, living 
and immanent in him. Between God and his human nature 
was no intermediary; it was the instrument, and God the im¬ 
mediate motor. Every one of his acts had a human and divine 
character which only one phrase can express : he was the 
God-Man. Nothing in Jesus denotes or betrays extreme sensi¬ 
bility, the dream of a boundless imagination. All his faculties 
were duly balanced ; and, when he called God his Father, he 
expressed an inward fact of which he had an intimate assurance. 
He did not demonstrate it to himself, but saw it; he alone was 
one with the Father. 1 Moses, the greatest of the servants of 
God, trembled before the Lord, the terrible Lord whose face 
none could see and live ; 2 Jesus saw him and loved him. The 

1 John x. 20. 

a Exodus xxxiii. 20. 



THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 

From the Painting by William Bouguereau 
















THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


93 


prophets were overcome by the word of Jehovah, which fell on 
them like a thunder-clap ; they said : “ The Lord hath spoken 
unto me.” Jesus always heard and transmitted the word as 
his own. The greatest of religious souls have sought God in 
asceticism and, by painful effort, they feel for a moment his 
presence in swift ecstasies, from which they soon return ; but 
Jesus possessed God as his own, his nature needed no 
rapture; it dwelt in God, whom he saw face to face. 

He had in himself the Spirit of the very God ; he possessed 
all that an intelligent nature can receive from God. “We 
saw him,” said the beloved disciple after his death, “ he was 
indeed the only Son of God, full of grace and truth.” 1 

From this union with the divine nature all his human 
faculties gained a fulness and harmony which have made of 
him the perfect type of man. He knew God, as a son knows 
his father, and he kept his word in himself. 2 In him were hid 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 3 He had the 
intuition which perceives the Principle of things, and in those 
phenomena which strike our senses, he read the invisible truths 
which the human mind has to gain from phenomena by 
abstraction. No earthly master instructed or formed him, 
he was taught of God. Therefore ignorance did not limit his 
thought, nor did error trouble him ; in him inspiration was con¬ 
stant, not as, in the prophets, a borrowed and intermittent light 
but infinite brightness always radiated from the eternal Word. 

The will and the affections are seldom properly balanced in 
a man of great intellectual power. In Jesus all is at the same 
height; as truth enlightened, so goodness and beauty attracted 
him ; his love was for good as a whole, and his spirit fixed on 
absolute truth. Between the will of his Father and his 
own there was constant harmony, in spite of sorrow, the 


1 John i. 14. 
3 John viii. 

8 Coloss. ii. 


94 


JESUS CHRIST. 


opposition of men, the instinctive revolts of nature, and 
obstacles of every kind, even of death itself. He knew only 
the will of his Father, which was his meat; 1 he did nothing 
of himself; 2 he did not seek his own will, but that which was 
pleasing to his Father, 3 and he always fulfilled it. 4 

The best men see the good, and only do it by halves ; 
their ill-ordered powers paralyse them, slacken their course or 
lead them astray ; their proud egoism, in turning them from 
God, deprives them of his support; Jesus saw the good and 
realised it without error or failure. “ Which of you 
convinceth me of sin?” 5 he asked. Nothing could resist his 
power ; the might of God was in him ; and as he obeyed his 
Father, acting only as his will ordained, he was never 
deceived. His prayer was always heard ; and this confidence 
gave him the gentleness of one who can do all things. He 
did no violence, for he knew none; he did what he pleased > 
but his will was only towards good and life ; goodness was 
his law, life and good flowed from his hands, always open 
to bless. 

Imagination, desire, and passion, which attract the soul 
powerfully and fix its roots in the earth, which so often 
trouble our perception of the truth, and assail or interfere 
with our liberty, all these inferior forces obeyed the will of 
Jesus, as his will obeyed that of God. Hence the calmness, 
serenity and gentleness displayed by his harmonious nature. 
God’s light, love, and beauty breathed through his whole 
being, a divine virtue went out from him. 6 His sensibility was 
perfect; by it he entered into communion with earth. He 
loved nature, which spoke to him of the goodness and bounty 
of his heavenly Father; 7 he asked it for no other joy; 

1 John iv. 34. 

2 John v. 30. 

8 John vi. 38. 

4 John viii. 18. 

6 John viii. 46. 

8 Luke vi. 1,9; viii. 46. 

7 Matt. vi. 28 ; xii. 27. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


95 


living among men, he chose to know their sorrows, fatigues, 
compassion, holy wrath against evil, unceasing struggles, 
faithlessness, treason, torture and the shock of a bloody 
agony, the dread punishment of death. 

He often wept. 1 All human sufferings moved him ; but 
in the innocence of children he found rest and charm. A 
prophet, seeing him from afar, called him “ A man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief.” 2 His only emotion was that of 
the Spirit which possessed him; and the only sensible joy 
which he tasted here below was to meet faithful souls, and 
that because he could save them. 

Evil made him sorrowful even unto agony. The piercing 
cry which goes up from all creation travailing for the glory of 
the children of God, for its renewal and transfiguration, 3 
filled the soul of Jesus, and nowhere else has found a fuller 
and more moving expression: men have always thought 
of him as the Crucified, the most gentle and best-beloved 
of martyrs. 

Considered in its essence, beyond all accidental and 
artificial divisions, founded on culture and race, climate and 
time, civilisation and religion, the human race divides itself into 
three classes : the multitude, men of talent, and men of genius. 
It is a gigantic pyramid, of which the multitude forms the base, 
men of talent the middle, and men of genius the summit. 
Genius carries with it originality, invention, and the initiative ; 
it creates new forms and gives impetus to the whole, 
leads mankind in directions hitherto unknown, troubles or 
calms, leads astray or directs, abases or uplifts. Men of talent 
do not invent, they follow the inspirations of genius, apply and 
preserve, interpret and divulge them. In them are seen the 
painful effort and patient labour which are the honour of 

1 Luke xix. 41 ; John xi. 35. 

2 Isaiah liii. 3. 

3 Romans viii. 15. 


9 6 JESUS CHRIST. 

every man of good will. If genius be a god, talent is his 
prophet. 

A prey to its instincts and vague desires, the crowd, 
passive and without initiative, obeys the impulse of its 
masters ; receives from them ideas ready made, and directions 
for its course ; it is the flock which follow where the shepherd 
leads. However great it may be, no human genius is perfect; 
but it has its limits and excesses, weakness and violence, 
sudden intuitions and sudden eclipses, errors and blindness. 
Intermittent inspiration exhausts it ; its works fade and grow 
old ; sooner or later its creations are out of date. Nothing 
of all this was in Christ; his word, his life, his work, brood 
over mankind like a brilliant sky, astonishing the reason, 
ruling conscience, defying the changes and power of time. 

Human genius has differences which result from the facul¬ 
ties in which it excels. Genius is shown in idea, in action, 
and in aesthetics; the first thinks and conceives, existing in 
philosophers, moralists, and scientific men, who wrest some 
secrets from the riddle of things, from God, from the human 
soul, and from nature. Men of action have power to sub¬ 
jugate, as politicians, conquerors, and the higher class of 
workmen ; these are the leaders of the men who move and 
transform the world. Others, possessed by the ideal, trans¬ 
late it ; and become orators, writers, poets, and artists, they 
embody under a sensible form, in word, colour or harmony, 
on canvas, in stone or metal. 

No human genius is universal, it can only bring its energy 
to bear on one point, and the dominant faculty always 
subordinates the others. One kind only is excepted, the 
religious genius. 

The development and predominance of a sense of 
the divine, is the chief characteristic of the religious 
genius. It floods and penetrates the soul which possesses it, 
and marks every faculty with its seal; it keeps the soul in com- 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


97 


munion with God, and, while others exist in the world of 
man and of nature, the religious soul is centred in the 
Infinite. It feels God’s presence everywhere, everywhere it looks 
to and calls on God, meditates on and adores him, its life is 
from him ; such a soul is a temple filled by God. 

Of all the forms with which human nature can be clothed, 
the religious form is no doubt the most perfect, for it gathers 
together all powers into the highest harmony, concentrating 
them on the sublimest object which the intelligence, the 
will, and the power of action can attain. Since truth, 
goodness, and the ideal have God for their centre and 
perfection, to draw nurture from God is to live in eternal 
truth, eternal goodness, absolute beauty. 

When the religious genius finds outward and visible 
expression, it implies and necessarily includes all others: the 
genius of thought to teach men the highest truths of God, 
destiny, and life; the genius of action to command and 
discipline conscience; the genius of art, to embody the 
divine ideal in word or ritual, so as to charm the human 
being through his senses. Indeed, all the great men who 
influence mankind on the religious side, are also great 
thinkers, great legislators, great artists; they have science, 
power, attraction. In the name of God whose ambas¬ 
sadors they declare themselves, they do not discuss, but 
affirm, they speak as masters and exercise a sort of fascina¬ 
tion over the multitude: strong natures, they have the secret 
of inspiring faith in those who are worthy of it; they flow 
through the centuries, like rivers of life, irrigating and 
nourishing thousands of generations, through which they 
take their course. 

Jesus has never been classed in a special category of 
human genius, owing to the full and unequalled harmony 
of all his faculties. Yet, if I dared apply to him a name 
too small for his glory, I would say that he is the religious 
genius, in its essence and ideal splendour. 


98 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The majority of great men who have founded a religion 
have only been reformers, as Zoroaster and Sakya-Muni, 
mingling with their doctrine errors which conscience and 
reason reject. The dualism of the one, the strange asceticism 
of the other, are enough to condemn them ; and the holiest 
law which, before the Gospel, ruled any people, that of Moses, 
bore an indelible mark of imperfection. Transitory in its 
essence, it disappeared as soon as the grown man was ready 
for the Kingdom of God. 

All the notes of the religious genius in its absolute 
perfection realized are shown in Christ, as the evangelists 
reveal him, as Christian faith adores him, and as he discloses 
himself. Before him, even in Moses and the prophets, we 
find a sketch only; after him, even among the saints, we 
find but a copy of this divine model. He does not offer only 
an idea of God more or less new and original, but always 
abstract; he reveals the living and personal God, the Father 
of heaven. He is the express image of God, sensible, living, 
personal, one with him ; 1 who sees him, sees the Father ; 2 who 
believes in him, believes in the Father ; 3 he did not only 
point to heaven, but heaven in him was opened. He instituted 
no vain ritual, no sterile pomp, which speak to the sense and 
imagination of crowds, he lives still under the symbols and 
sacraments of worship founded by him; and man com¬ 
municates with his divine being when he participates in those 
religious rites. While others impose laws and codify them, 
enslaving their sectaries by their power, he communicates 
to the faithful the Spirit of God, his own spirit, and makes 
himself beloved. Others speak to a people, a race, a time ; 
he speaks to every creature, without distinction of people, 
race, and time. Moses was but a servant: Jesus is the Son 
of God. 

1 John x. 30. 

5 John xii. 45. 

3 John xi. 41. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


99 


The essential note of religious genius, the test of its truth^ 
and its title to the veneration of men, is holiness ; virtue is the 
touchstone of its mission. A man may be the messenger of 
God without working miracles; true miracle consists in the 
light of conscience and a pure life. Wonders may deceive, 
heroism and a will obedient to God’s law do not deceive; 
so-called visions may be only an illusion, the practice of 
good always manifests the presence of the perfect Being. 

All men of great religious genius bear the marks of some 
moral weakness, or disclose some hidden wound. When we 
read the life of Mahomet, our conscience is shocked by the 
polygamy which dishonoured his last years, and shows the 
weakness of this great man, a politician but no saint, who 
could not master his passions even at an age when moderation 
seems a natural virtue. Nor can we absolve the wise 
Sakya-Muni from that pessimism which is the basis of his 
doctrine, and the violent asceticism which may perhaps be 
a great secret to die by, but which is the very negation of 
our destiny on earth. 

Man is not only made to conquer heaven, but to be the 
master of the world. The true religious teacher must impart 
to him the science of death, while he does not withhold the 
science of life; Jesus alone was an exception to the fatal 
law of moral failure. No one has ever found him in conflict 
with good against the will of his Father. He is the human 
ideal of sanctity, the spotless type of virtue; and the best 
among the sons of men are those who come nearest to him. 
Sanctity has overflowed mankind with the thought of him; 
since Jesus came, he sanctifies all he touches; virtue has 
multiplied in his train; it seems to form the wake of 
Christ across the waves of the human ocean. 

The most important fact in the interior history of great 
souls is the genesis of their vocation. They only exist as 


IOO 


JESUS CHRIST. 


they become conscious of their providential destiny. All 
have a tendency to reveal themselves, to bring themselves 
forward and to act; the greater they are, the more imperious 
is this impulse ; but when they manifest themselves in action 
they have to reckon with circumstances and time. The 
crime of genius is to betray or falsify its career, as its 
glory is to accomplish it to the end. If unfaithful, it becomes 
a scourge ; if docile, a guide and leader. When a genius, 
conscious of its own powers, submits to God as to a sovereign 
law, when he has the supreme gift of knowing his needs and 
opportunities, he is able to act, for his vocation is clear. The 
majority hesitate long; only after great exertions are they 
conscious of themselves and the part they have to play; 
they acquire with much labour the knowledge of their 
surroundings and their time; they seek with anguish to know 
the will of God of which they have not the secret; their 
selfishness and passions mingle with the work which demands 
self-sacrifice; they often shrink from difficulties and obstacles, 
or else throw themselves blindly into them; here is a drama 
of which history only reveals to us fragmentary scenes of the 
cruel drama, known in its entirety to conscience alone. 

But Jesus always answers to his high destiny, which he 
knew from all eternity by divine knowledge, from his con¬ 
ception by intuitive knowledge. All his vocation lay in the 
original fact of his divine sonship. As Son of God, he could 
have no other function in the world than to extend the 
kingdom of his Father; the kingdom of God, the kingdom 
of heaven, as he afterwards called it. His words, teaching, 
acts, and entire life, his struggles and death itself are not 
conceivable without the ultimate intention which was their 
only cause. 

From the biblical point of view, mankind was then 
divided into two portions : Judaism and Paganism. In 
Judaism the Kingdom of God had already begun and its 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


IOI 


awful name was known; its law, imperfect and for slaves, 
had been promulgated: Jesus was to give it its complement 
and perfection , 1 and in this his Messianic character consisted. 
His Church was to take the place of the law of Moses, and to 
include not only the faithful Jew, but also the despised 
heathen, the victim of sin and error. 

The whole of mankind, in spite of the Mosaic law given 
to Israel, in spite of the wisdom and intellects of great men, 
was prostrate beneath the empire of evil, and powerless to 
conquer it; the work of Jesus was to give it the very Spirit 
of God which alone can triumph over evil, and to baptize it 
into that Spirit; so that he was to be not alone the Messiah 
of the Jews, but the only Saviour of all nations . 2 Mankind, 
in the depths of its nature, seeks God, who changes not; it is 
destined to know him, to share his life, and find in him the 
fulfilment of its desires: the task of Jesus is to lead man 
thither, imparting truth and life ; 3 but as these can only be 
found in him alone, he must needs draw all men unto him . 4 
The conscience of all men needs, and eternal justice exacts, 
an expiation ; Jesus was to be the Lamb of God, the victim 
who washes away the sin of the world . 5 Mankind is ignorant 
of God for whom it is created: it was necessary that Jesus 
should reveal his name. He was to be the only Master ; 6 men had 
not as yet learnt that love was the whole law of duty; Jesus 
must be the teacher and lawgiver. Thus was the Kingdom of 
God to be constituted, a Kingdom destined to suffer violence, 
and the violent were to take it by force ; 7 Jesus was to be its 
founder. 

Under the action of the personal and living God who fills 
the nature of man, knowing the will of his Father, penetrating 
the souls of men, whose Messiah he knew himself to be, 

1 Matt. v. 17. 2 I. Tim xvi. 5. 

* John x. 10. 4 John xii. 32. 

5 John i. 29, 36. 6 Matt, xxiii. 

t Matt. xi. 12. 


102 


JESUS CHRIST. 


sounding the depths of the human creature, knowing the pain 
which gnaws him and the evil which destroys him, he saw 
the whole drama of the grand life of mankind, knew that 
the hour of his history had come, and cried with a voice which 
shook the world: “ I am the Expected of my people, I am 
the Desire of nations.” 

Such was the vocation of Jesus. No destiny can be 
compared to his, for all others are marked by the infirmity of 
genius, the narrowness of race, the prejudices of the moment; 
and all, like man’s wisdom, are limited in one or another 
direction. We may give to Mahomet the honour of having 
wrested some Arab tribes from idolatry, and thus become, for 
one race, the apostle of God’s unity; but we cannot absolve 
him from having declared himself the bearer of a final 
revelation; the Koran was set aside, before its birth, by the 
Bible and by the Gospel which he plagiarised. Whatever 
admiration we may feel for the gentleness and kindly nature 
of Sakya-Muni, proclaiming himself the master of the way 
of salvation to men, it is impossible not to shrink from a 
pessimism which declares that existence itself is an evil, and 
the sole remedy is to be freed from all existence or Nirvana. 
Its moral and social code is in some points admirable; but 
Buddha gave no force for carrying it out, and herein lies 
the radical weakness of human genius. There are words, 
examples, and a moral law to enlighten ; but always the dead 
letter which kills, never the spirit which maketh alive. 

The vocation of Jesus shows no personal weakness, no 
narrowness of race, no error of his time. Original, as all 
which comes directly from God, it bears in its human form 
the characters of God: universality, creative efficiency, 
changelessness. 

Born as a Jew, at a definite time, Jesus was like none of the 
great men of his people; he was neither a Jew of Palestine 
nor of Alexandria. He is greater than Hillel, the rabbi oi 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


103 


Jerusalem, greater than Philo the Hellenist. His words and 
doctrines recall nothing of either one or the other, he is 
himself alone. What he spake was for all time, as real to-day 
as eighteen hundred years ago; the typal man wrought in 
him; his work embraced the whole of mankind in so far as 
it is eternal and essential; his Kingdom will never pass away 
till God and heaven, whose names they bear, are no more ; 
the Law he formulated as a code of that Kingdom will never 
become obsolete, for it expresses the eternal relations between 
the will of God and men whom he will save; and the power 
which he brings with his Law is the very power of God, his 
living and personal Spirit, ready to inflame mankind. 

Such was the force of the Christian idea that it has opened 
a way across all ages and nations, living and unsubdued as at 
its earliest day, in spite of man’s resistance. Christ, though he 
left the earth, remained what he had manifested himself in the 
face of the universe ; his spirit enlightens, his work lives, the 
Kingdom of God pursues its magnificent evolution. Judaism, 
always powerless as a religion, sees him increase, it cannot 
destroy him, and must submit. The last remnants of Hindoo 
paganism are falling to pieces, and while Mahometanism 
endeavours to wean savages from their gross fetishism, Jesus 
sways the world by his Spirit, the only source from which 
man can always draw the truth of God, power and peace. 

A strong vocation gives its direction to life, fills up its 
inward activity, concentrates thought, the will, and the 
affections; but that of Jesus absorbed him entirely; it 
enlightened, sustained and nourished him in the long years at 
Nazareth. While his life was unknown, the Spirit of God 
fostered his growth, moulded and prepared him for his work. 
He received all from God and nothing from men, for no 
master could teach him the things that are above man. All 
that he saw, felt, willed, and desired, was given to him by 
intuition and inspiration; he looked within himself; all his 
words were living in and were but the clear and strong 


104 


JESUS CHRIST. 


echo of his consciousness; hesitation and doubt, experiment 
and effort, were alike unknown to him. 

Human genius when inspired is agitated, carried away ? 
unable to contain itself; the calm of Jesus was full and 
constant as his inspiration. Master of himself, he acted only 
when he chose. When his hour was come the workman, the 
carpenter’s son, was to quit his obscure life, and to say with 
decision, firmness, fulness, and tranquil energy: “The time 
is accomplished; the kingdom of heaven is among you; 
repent and believe .” 1 This was to be his first word, the 
commentary on the mysterious answer that he had given 
when twelve years old: “ Wist ye not that I must be about 
my Father’s business?” It contains the whole of his public 
life and destiny. 

Rationalism, whose critical faculty has never been able to 
sound the religious genius of the East, has been as clumsily 
mistaken about the special work of Jesus as about his nature. 
It has seen nothing in the mysterious relation which welds 
Christ to God, and has only succeeded in giving an insufficient 
interpretation of his divine sonship; hence its errors about the 
destiny of the Master. It has never lifted itself to his own 
idea which distinguishes him from every human being. It 
has considered him as a reformer, a moralist, a religious and 
social revolutionary, a legislator and a founder of a pure 
religion, having only at his command, like all men, ability to 
instruct, formulate new dogmas and purer commandments, 
and to establish a new society; it has not recognised in 
him the power of communicating to man the Spirit of God, 
as a living and personal force. 

This conception may go beyond the systems of a philo¬ 
sophy, which suppresses the divine personality, but it must be 
accepted by the historian who respects the evangelical docu- 


1 Mark i. 15. 


THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 


105 


ments, and who, instead of describing Jesus according to his 
own ideas, seeks, on the irresistible witness of history, to 
represent him as he declares himself. 

When a man called of God is ripe for his work, the 
circumstances in which he is to act, summon him to declare 
himself ; as God creates a genius and gives him to his work, 
so he arranges the events in which a genius is to take his 
place ; there is a pre-established harmony between the course 
of the one and the evolution of the others, the fulness of 
time is the same for both. 

When Jesus approached his thirtieth year, the age of 
complete manhood among the Jews, the same Spirit which 
produced him, and made the whole movement of the ages 
converge towards him , 1 directly prepared the theatre in which 
he should appear. It made straight a way for him, and woke 
the soul of his people by one of those voices which excite the 
multitude and shake the conscience. 


See Book I., chap. L 




BOOK II. 

JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND THE COMING 
OF JESUS. 


14. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE JEWS IN JUDAEA TOWARDS THE YEAR 26. THE 
COMING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

We must pause for a moment in the Gospel history 
to examine the life of the Jewish society in Palestine, 
towards the year 26, at the time when Pilate, as Roman 
procurator, was governor of Judaea. We find a course 
of events, a religious and social organisation, a strife of 
parties, a mass of superstitions, prejudices, passions and 
hopes, currents of opinion, in one word, a state of national 
consciousness, which we must study close at hand and in 
some detail, to understand the surroundings in which Jesus 
lived, and the movement which, under the action of John the 
Baptist, was to prepare his career. 


At the first glance, we discern in this seething little world 
many distinct groups. There were first the great patrician 
and sacerdotal families, from which were drawn the high 
priests, the families of Boethos, Hanan, Phabi, and Kanith. 
The high priesthood had become for them a sort of inheritance 
for which they disputed before the Roman authority, by the 
power of intrigue and of money. Opulent, proud, and detested, 
this aristocracy pressed the people for tithes and taxes, and 
outraged its poverty by a luxurious life. The upper classes 


110 


JESUS CHRIST. 


and the sacerdotal caste were not forgiven for their con¬ 
ciliatory attitude towards the detested Gentile power. The 
high priests, appointed and dismissed at the will of the 
procurators, had lost credit. The people, which hated and 
despised them, revenged themselves by insult, ridicule, and 
curses; nothing stopped the flood of hatred which rose and 
overpassed all bounds. Twenty years later this was the 
song in the streets of Jerusalem : 

Woe to the family of Boethos, woe ! because they smite with their rods ! 

Woe to the family of Hanan, woe ! because they hiss as vipers ! 

Woe to the family of Kataros, because of their slanderous pens ! 

Woe to the family of Ismail ben Phabi, because of the weight of their 
fists! 

They themselves are high priests ; their sons are treasurers; their sons- 
in-law keepers of the Temple, and their servants smite the people 
with their rods. 1 

These curses of the exasperated crowd say much for the 
brutality and tyranny of the priests. Their rascally servants 
would, with a band of ruffians, bear down on the threshing- 
floors and granaries to carry off their masters’ tithes by force 
of arms, and ill-treat those who refused to pay. 2 The high 
priests often had the exclusive right of selling the animals for 
sacrifice. The family of Hanan had established bazaars 
(Kaneioth) on the Mount of Olives for breeding and selling 
doves ; they succeeded in rendering this pious monopoly lucra¬ 
tive. Abusing their authority, they multiplied the cases in 
which, according to ritual, the sacrifices of pigeons were 
obligatory ; and these became so excessively dear that a single 
pair of doves was sold for a gold piece. While these pontiffs 
were bloated with wealth, the priests of inferior rank died of 
want and hunger. 3 

It will be easily understood that complete religious 
indifference obtained in this pampered class; the degenerate 

1 Talmud ,, Hierosol ., Pesachim, 57 a. 

3 Antiq. xx. 8, 859, 2. 

3 Antiq. xx. 8, 8 ; 9, 2. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. Ill 

sons of Aaron and Levi burned with no impatience to see 
the Kingdom of God, and were yet thoroughly conservative. 
They formed the nucleus of the Sadducean 1 party; their 
orthodoxy was unbending, particularly in all that pertained 
to ritual, and their judgments were inexorable. The things of 
another world scarcely attracted their attention ; materialistic, 
sensual, and sceptical, they did not believe in it. To uphold 
established order, to live on good terms with the Romans, 
to remain in office, to make good cheer and to enjoy 
themselves, was for them essential. Religion was not an end 
but a means; they took care not to say it; but the axiom was 
the secret rule of their life. 

Besides the aristocracy of birth, fortune, and the priest¬ 
hood, there existed also an aristocracy of religious knowledge; 
the men of letters, doctors and scribes. Since the “Torah” had 
attained so high a place in Jewish life and had become a power 
in it almost equally with the Temple, the men of the “Torah” 
took their place by the side of men of worship. Sacrifice 
absorbed the attention of one party, and study that of the 
others; the first were employed in sacerdotal functions on 
account of their birth, but the others sprang from all tribes 
and all classes ; they represented knowledge, whether 
religious, moral, ritual, and juridical; they commented on, 
copied, and propagated the Book; and soon rose above the 
priestly class, becoming the masters of opinion. That power 
is to the strongest, is a law of all human society when 
it reaches a certain degree of culture; and the strongest 
are those who know. 

1 The party of the Just, Tsedekah , justice. This name at first, 
under John Hyrcanus, seems to have designated the party composed 
above all of priests, and who, opposed to the exaggerations of the 
Pharisees, insisted only on justice, what was demanded by the text of the 
law. Perhaps they liked to attach themselves by this name to the last of the 
Pontiffs whose name was held in veneration, Simeon named the Just. Cf. 
Antiq. xiii. 9; xii. 2, 4; xviii, 1, &c. Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 


I 12 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The doctors did more than study and teach the “ Torah,” 
they were distinguished by a stricter fidelity to all its rules, 
resisting with energy all Gentile influence. These were the 
“ Chasidim,” or pious, dating from the time when Hellenism, 
after the conquest of Alexander, invaded everything; they 
had stood firm against the heathen civilization and manners 
of the Greeks and Syrians, and they were at this time resisting 
Roman corruption. Jewish exclusiveness was found in them 
in all its bitterness; they personified the national conscience, 
they remembered and hoped. All the facts of the great 
history of Israel lived in their memory; all the promises 
of God to the people of which they were members, gleamed 
before them as a splendid future: the “Torah” was every¬ 
thing for them, because it contained their past and their 
destiny, and taught them that legal justice which, making 
them agreeable to God, guaranteed the triumph of their race 
and faith. 

This double aristocracy gave rise to two parties, whose 
struggles, rivalries, and excesses filled the two last centuries 
of Jewish history: the Sadducees (Cadukim) or the Just, 
and the Pharisees (Perushim) or the Separated. The first 
belonged almost entirely to the aristocracy of fortune, or 
the priesthood, the second to that of letters. 

In becoming a party the Pharisees 1 came under the law 
of every sect; in that they exaggerated their principles and 
tendencies, they deserved the anathemas of the gentlest and 
wisest of masters ; self-blinded, their minds closed to all living 
inspiration, they understood nothing of the mystery of events, 
and became the most hostile and obstinate power opposed to 
the foundation of God’s Kingdom. Absorbed in the study 
of the “Torah,” or Book, they knew the letter only; the spirit 

1 From Parousch , separation, distinction. The Pharisees or the Sepa¬ 
rated, Distinguished, Pure, were apart from all which was not Jewish. 
All intercourse with Gentiles, every concession made to their customs on 
the part of the Sadducees, was held as profanation. 



From the Painting by O. Mengelberg. 













JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 113 

escaped them, and the letter killed them. They neglected 
more and more the moral element, and attended only to that 
which was exterior and ceremonial; they did not trouble 
themselves about the holiness of the soul, but were zealous 
for legal holiness. Duty for them was no longer the 
accomplishment of the will of God, but, before all things, 
the strict practice of the law. Carried away by their zeal 
for observances, they did not think of increasing virtue, but 
of extending the ritual: the greatest saint was not he who 
subdued himself and loved God and his neighbour, but who 
made the greater number of fasts and of vows, of ablutions 
and sacrifices, who wore the largest phylacteries and longest 
tassels, walked with his back most bent, his eyes most fixed 
on the ground, who affected the most gloomy manners on 
fast-days, forbidding to anoint the head, to wash the face, 1 or 
even to greet friends, 2 and who used the most interminable 
prayers. Such piety was only a hypocritical mask; the art 
of seeming and of lying, of concealing the emptiness and 
vices of the soul under an outward appearance of sanctity, 
became almost universal among these false devotees. 

No noble thought was ever heard from the pulpits or in 
the synagogues; the celebrated teachers who, under Herod 
the Great, had above all contributed to the development of 
tradition and custom, to the juridical interpretation of the 
law, men like Shemaiah and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai, 
had disappeared, and, as always happens when great men are 
wanting, inferior men insisted on excessive detail. Formalism 
increased, questions became more subtle, and the strangest 
and most unrestrained casuistry took the place of teaching. 3 
Ritual discussions interested the learned men, and were the 
battleground between rival parties and schools. The question 
whether, on the day of Feast of Expiation, incense should be 

1 Talmud Hierosol. Schabbat ., f. 12, 1. 

3 Id., Taanith , i. 4-7. 

8 Id., BeracoU fol. 13, 2; Sotah, fol. 20, 3 ; Babyl., Sotah , fol. 22, 2. 


JESUS CHRIST. 


114 

burnt before the Holy of Holies, or rather in the Holy of 
Holies itself, immediately after the entering in of the high 
priest, was judged to be of such importance that the Pharisees 
on the eve of the great day obliged the sacrificing priest to 
swear to observe the true rite. It was disputed whether 
the oblation which accompanied the sacrifice belonged to the 
priest or the altar; whether the herbs gathered in the spring 
as first-fruits on the day after the Passover, should be cut on 
a sabbath day; whether the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb was 
a violation of the sabbath ; whether at the Feast of Tabernacles 
the libation of water should be made on the altar itself, 
and the procession of willow-branches should pause at the 
altar; whether the tithes should be taken on crops such 
as wheat and oil, or also on mint, and anise, and cummin ; 
whether the oath by heaven or earth, by Jerusalem or by 
the soul, was binding, or simply an oath by God; whether 
men must swear by the Temple or by the gold in the Temple, 
by the altar or the victim on the altar. 

Base and empty casuistry, without morality and without 
dignity! The most exaggerative were naturally of the most 
authority; the disciples of Hillel, inclined to moderate inter¬ 
pretation, were outstripped by those of Shammai, austere and 
irreconcilable; the letter made the law; those who stood 
most by the letter were most certain of success. When once 
passion is let loose in religion, as in politics, the art of flattery 
is the secret of conquest. 

A famous question was debated between the two schools : 
whether it was permissible to eat on the sabbath or feast day, 
an egg which was laid on the sabbath day. The mild Hillel 
inexorably answered No ; but the austere Shammai was less 
strict in this particular case. In practice the stricter master 
was obeyed; but on the other hand Shammai forbade the 
instruction of children and the care of the sick on the sabbath 
day; nor would he allow a sea voyage or the attack of a town 
three days before the sabbath. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 115 

The supreme question for pious Pharisees was that of purity 
—not the purity of the heart which God loves and the prophets 
required, but legal purity, which is visible, and which placed 
the Jew in external and violent opposition with the Gentile. 
It was in dispute whether the flesh of a dead body defiled, or 
the skin and bones ; the contact with Gentile books or rather 
with Gentile sacred books ; whether the water which ran from 
an impure vase was itself impure. “ Cursed,” said the Zealots, 
“ is he who despises the washing of hands! he shall be cut off 
from the earth.” The Sadducees scoffed : “ You will see,” they 
said, “ that the Pharisees will end by purifying the sun’s orb.” 
A puerile rigorism took possession of them; their pious 
practices consisted in sacrifies, in vows, in ordered, multiplied, 
and complicated prayers, which they said as much as possible 
in the Temple, and sometimes in the street itself. There 
were many ablutions before being present at a sacrifice, and 
even before the reading of the Law; they washed their hands 
before eating, according to a practice probably established by 
Hillel and Shammai; they rigidly abstained from the bread, 
oil, and wine of the Gentiles; they fasted twice in the week, 
until the evening, severely and voluntarily, above all on 
Monday and Thursday; and gave their alms with ostentation. 

All these arbitrary customs were introduced gradually, 
after the exile, under the influence of the Pharisees, and 
became a severe yoke which they laid on themselves and 
the people. Moral direction was necessarily compromised by 
the inextricable detail of outward observances. The Gospels 
enable us to gather in the many censures of Jesus on the 
Pharisees, that, among many other errors, they thought they 
were dispensed from assisting their poor relatives, by conse¬ 
crating all their goods to God. 1 

Across this maze of legal subtleties and these casuistical 
wranglings, moral science still threw some light. The doctors 


1 Matt. v. 20; XV. 3. 


ii6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


loved to condense their wisdom, in Oriental fashion, into a few 
terse and vivid sentences, or parables of original and pointed 
form. The Talmud gives us many specimens; the book 
called “ Pirke Aboth ” is an interesting collection ; but, like the 
sublime axioms of philosophy, and the fine precepts of the 
Fathers of the synagogue, the “ great couples,” as they were 
called, were only a dead letter; neither of them had availed 
to become the living law of those who repeated them or to 
whom they were addressed. The Gentiles had been unable 
to break the fatal yoke of fatalism and pantheism, and the 
Jewish doctors had succumbed to a miserable formalism. 

Yet it would be an historical error and an injustice to make 
the Pharisaic party as a whole responsible for these religious 
errors, absurdities, exaggerations, and vices. The New 
Testament sketches several figures of great simplicity and 
nobleness, such as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and 
Gamaliel. We find there the real descendants of Hillel, the 
true type of Jew who looked to God with hope. They 
formed a chosen body whose wisdom was not always listened 
to in the councils of the elders and chief priests; they did 
not succeed in arresting the torrent of opinion, but they had 
the glory of seeing clearly ; they heard the appeal of Christ, 
and incurred the fate of those minorities which are crushed in 
violent crises, where defeat is sometimes an honour and 
triumph an evil. 

In the mass of the people, what is now called the middle 
class, took scarce any interest in these empty scholastic 
discussions, nor cared about the innumerable practices of this 
rigorous school. They might admire the devout Pharisee, but 
not imitate him. The Sadducees laughed at him : “ Look at 
him,” they said, “ he torments himself in this life, to find with 
difficulty his recompense in another ”: but none the less he 
preserved his sullen and proverbial pride, nothing counted in 
his eyes but his knowledge of the Law and his ritual practices. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 117 

The ignorant and sceptical people, all who did not strictly 
observe the Pharisaic rules, inspired him with profound con¬ 
tempt ; he treated them as sinners, 1 as an abomination, and as 
unclean animals. 

The publicans above all, 2 collectors of taxes, agents of the 
Imperial treasury, who inspected merchandise and received 
the duties on imports and exports, and took tolls on bridges 
and roads, were objects of his disdain and hatred. On the 
other hand he was satisfied with himself: “ I have done all,” 
he said, “ and have failed in nothing.” In general the people 
were rather lukewarm than indifferent; on feast days all were 
excited, even those who, like the publicans, mixed with the 
Gentile world, and were content to be its administrative 
agents. They encumbered the Court of the Gentiles, and, 
from a distance, took part in the sacrifices and the rest of the 
ceremonial worship. 

The Essenes were a solitary exception. 3 These ascetics 
were a curious phenomenon of Jewish life at that time. They 
formed no party in the nation, inasmuch as they had 
renounced the world and all public action, but rather they 
were a religious order. They are not to be considered as 
belonging to the Yogis of India, or the Pythagoreans in 
Greece, or the Theurgists of the Alexandrian school; their 
true masters were the “Chasidim” or Pious, fervent and 
anti-Hellenic Jews, from whose ranks came the impetuous 
Judas Maccabaeus. To their eyes the law of Moses was 
everything; for it they had quitted active life, discussion, 
and militant policy ; they were absorbed in retreat, in rigorous 

1 The a/xoprwXot of the Gospels. 

2 TcXwi/ai, dpxiTtluvai. Cf. Luke xix. 2. Bell Jud. ii. 14,4. 

3 This name Essenes is the translation of the Greek word ’E aaaloi. It 
recalls the Syriac word hassa, which is itself a translation of the Hebrew 
Chasidim , pious. This etymology seems to us far more likely than that 
which would derive the word Essene from sakah t to baptize ; from asah, 
to heal; or hachah, the retiring. Cf. Josephus, Antiq. xviii.; B. /. ii. 8. 


n8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


asceticism and contemplation. The Pharisees seemed to 
them lukewarm and the synagogue degenerate. Unable to 
change the world, they died to the world ; they lived together 
in community and in poverty. During some time they were 
called “ Ebionites,” or the Poor, because they declared they 
would possess nothing; and finally, they grouped themselves 
into a true congregation and became the “ Essenes.” 
Retreating to the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, they built 
true convents under the palm trees of the oasis of Engedi. 

They gave up all endeavour for the amelioration of 
mankind, leaving everything to God in their mysticism ; they 
believed in the immortality of the soul, looked for their 
enfranchisement from matter, and awaited future happiness; 
they took no oaths; were sober, chaste, silent, mortified, and 
frugal; they would have no servants, for all were brethren 
and equal. Josephus tells us that they did not marry, 1 but 
took charge of the children of others, at an age when they 
were still susceptible of discipline, treated them as though 
they belonged to their own family, and formed them after 
their own image. Their principal rite consisted in frequent 
ablutions ; they bathed at sunrise every morning. 

They considered themselves as priests ; for it was written : 
“Ye are a people of priests,” 2 and abstained from wine, 
because wine was forbidden to the sacrificing priest in the 
exercise of his functions; they did not enter towns, because 
the gateways were ornamented with statues ; they would not 
use Greek or Roman money, for the Book of Deuteronomy 
forbade graven images. The law of Moses was the tomb 
wherein they were buried; no longer living men, but ghosts. 
They passed through deserts and villages, as beings of another 
world, clothed with a white tunic and the “ mehil,” their loins 
bound with a long girdle, and at their side the “ dolabra,” a 

1 Bell. Jud ii 8, 2. 

2 Ex. ii. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I IQ 

small hatchet, whose use as prescribed by Deuteronomy is only 
peaceful. The Pharisees despised them and nick-named them 
“ Hemero-baptists ” with allusion to their morning bath, and 
ridiculed their rites ; their communism seemed a foolish thing 
and they were treated as pious fools. The Essenes appeared 
for the first time under Aristobulus I., a hundred years before 
Jesus Christ, and they finally disappeared about the year 70, 
when Jerusalem and the Temple were overthrown. 

Removed from party and from the powerful and educated 
classes, apart from the more or less indifferent and corrupt 
crowd, there are, in almost every nation, a certain number of 
souls who, by the very mediocrity of their situation, escape 
from the corruption of pride and riches, from the vices of the 
multitude, and even from those prejudices which, under the 
name of science and culture, frequently lead astray, narrow, 
and paralyse the minds of learned men. These men live 
unknown and inglorious, doing their duty in obscurity ; simple 
and upright, they fear God, are content with a little; having 
neither riches nor ambition, they bear the trials of life without 
a murmur, pity those who suffer, love peace, and keep them¬ 
selves from evil. Their eye is single and their heart sound, 
they see rightly because their will is right; they hunger and 
thirst after righteousness; they are the salt of the earth, 
preserving it from total corruption. 

When God wishes to move the world and transform a 
nation, he sends his prophets. Prophets are the lever of God, 
and the poor of this world his fulcrum. The voice which 
announces holy things finds an echo in them ; they are the 
first to answer to the rays of spring making all things new. It 
would be difficult to number them ; but God knows them, and 
his Spirit dwells in them. To neglect this element in the life 
of nations, silent though it be, is to omit one of the most active 
powers. We must look in times of crisis and anguish, towards 
these forgotten people, nameless and unknown; whom God 


120 


JESUS CHRIST. 


spares; who escape the deluge and quit the ark to begin a 
new era on a renewed and purified earth. 

It is difficult to estimate with any precision this element 
of Judaean society, which undeniably existed almost every¬ 
where, in town and country, in Galilee and Samaria, under the 
shadow of the Temple, on the shores of the lake, and even 
among the hated publicans. 

In spite of their serfdom and the shipwreck of their 
independence, the Jews, in Judaea, as in their colonies amid 
the Gentile world, still kept some shadow of their own self- 
government. This authority, at once religious and national, 
resided in an assembly of seventy-one members. Jewish 
tradition loved to ascribe this institution to Moses, and 
invoked the Law 1 to give it a sacred character; but as a 
fact there is nothing in common between the Sanhedrin and 
the Elders of whom Moses speaks. These last were only the 
representatives of the people; they deliberated on great 
occasions, but they had no national authority. We should be 
equally wrong if we confounded the Sanhedrin with the “ Great 
Assembly ” constituted by Ezra, which was only a college of 
scribes called in to solve questions on religious matters. 

The Sanhedrin properly so-called only appeared towards 
the middle of the third century before Jesus Christ, under 
Antiochus Epiphanes. Josephus calls it the yepovaia . 2 
This assembly must have been a concession of the Ptolemys, 
who, in order to gain the sympathies of the Jews, recognised 
their right to govern themselves. This tribunal, whose 
powers were, in their origin, under the Seleucidae, probably 
very restricted, became more influential under the 
Asmonaeans. We must go back to the reign of king 
Hyrcanus, about the year 130, to see the “Beth-Din” trans¬ 
formed into a “ Sunedrion,” and sharing the government of the 

1 Numbers xi. 16. 

3 Antiq ., xii. 3, 3. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 121 

nation with the high priest who, up to that time, had entire 
authority. The Romans, when masters of Judaea, in the year 
63, allowed this national representation to remain, with limited 
powers; and we shall find it, under the Herods and the 
procurators, with the organisation given it by Hyrcanus. 

The high priest presided over the Sanhedrin, at least after 
the death of Hillel. 1 He was called “Nasi” or Prince, and 
the vice-president was called “ Ab-beth-Din,” Father of the 
Tribunal, because he presided in judicial causes. The 
assembly drew its members from the families who had the 
right to the high-priesthood, like those of Hanan and Phabi; 
who were high priests. Among those who occupied a great 
position on account of wealth and who could, by the aid of 
their genealogical tables, witness to the purity of their Jewish 
origin, were the elders, TrptafivTepoi; and lastly, among the 
doctors, or chiefs of the school or rabbis, were those who 
copied the Torah, studied, commented on, and taught it; the 
scribes, ypapparu. e, and the masters, SiSacrKaXot, InKrTarric. 

The duties of the Sanhedrin were various and numerous ; 
all that constituted Jewish life, in its smallest details, sprang 
from its authority: it was at once a council, a court of 
justice, and a parliament. It was the judge in questions of 
doctrine, law, and ritual, watched over the purity of the race, 
the marriages of sacerdotal families; fixed the calendar and 
the new moons, and arbitrated in disputes between Jews. 
It was the guardian of traditions and the Law, cited before it 
blasphemers and false prophets, sentenced them even to death 
and stoning, subject only to the ratification of the Roman 
procurator. 

In the time of Jesus and after the reign of Herod, it was 
a greatly discredited body. 2 In giving to the high priest 
the presidency of the Sanhedrin, and in making the high 

1 Antiq. xx. 10; Acts v. 17, &c .; vii. 1; ix. 1 ; i. 2, &c. 

2 Antiq. xv. 2, 4; 3, I. 


122 


JESUS CHRIST. 


priest a creature of their will, Herod and the Romans found 
a means of enslaving the whole body, and making it 
subservient to them. The true national life was no longer 
to be sought for in its official representatives. When the 
Pharisees had the upper hand in the Great Council, their eager 
zeal for the Law shrank at nothing, and they did not hesitate 
to summon king Herod to appear before them. 1 The 
Sadducean party which had gained supremacy in the 
assembly had no longer this haughty independence, and its 
only thought was to suppress all outbursts among the people 
and to avoid the slightest conflict with the Roman authority. 
Pilate had no better allies than the high priests in keeping 
the conquered nation tranquil under the yoke. We shall even 
see that, in the trial of Jesus, they were more zealous than the 
governor for the peace of the empire and the friendship of 
Caesar. 

It is rare that the established powers and permanent 
bodies, are reformers ; they think chiefly of maintaining and 
perpetuating themselves; the present absorbs them, new 
ideas distress them, the morrow alarms them, they love rather 
to look backwards than forwards; and their function is 
rather that of preserving than of innovating. Every step in 
advance requires the sacrifice of worn-out forms, and passes 
over the crumbling ruins of that which has ceased to live. 
The Sanhedrin had submitted to this law, and would have 
hindered the Kingdom of God, if any human power could 
restrain the irresistible force of the Spirit. 

The political and religious events which, for more than 
a hundred years, succeeded each other in the little Jewish 
state of Palestine, rendered its position increasingly critical 
and led to its ruin. The fratricidal struggles of the last 
Asmonaean, the taking of Jerusalem by Pompey, the 

1 Antiq. xvii. 2, 4. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 123 

enthronement of Herod by Augustus as king of a recon¬ 
stituted Judaea, the heathen and tyrannical policy of this 
Idumaean, his attacks on religion, the parcelling out of his 
kingdom, the ten years of violence and cruelty of the 
ethnarch Archelaus, the transformation of the ethnarchy 
into a province of the empire, the oath of fidelity to Caesar, 
a Gentile authority, the tax paid each year as a definite 
sign of servitude, the presence of the Roman procurators 
and their despotic administration, made up the entire sad 
history of the Jews from the year 64, and were so many 
blows falling upon an already ruined nation. 

Every patriot was wounded in his passionate love for 
religion and country, a great sadness fell upon the whole 
nation, in mourning for a lost independence. The most cruel 
wound was less that they felt themselves vanquished by a 
Gentile power than that their liberty of worship should be 
violated. The majority was resigned to dwell under a foreign 
power, but none could bear a government which, by outraging 
their holy Law, was a weight on every conscience. The 
Roman procurators constantly laid a heavy and sacrilegious 
hand on the law, and the people in revolt preferred death 
to the spectacle of such abomination. 1 Indeed, the liberty to 
serve God is the holiest of all liberties, no other has more 
tenacious and indestructible roots in the heart of man ; and 
among all the nations there is none which has shown more 
attachment to their God and their Law than the Jewish nation. 

The time was far off in which Israel sought after idols 
and merited the curse of the prophets by faithlessness to 
Jehovah. Religion, even if ill-understood, had become its 
greatest passion. It was mingled with the blood of their 
race and with their country, and the people were always 
ready to rise in its defence; of all sentiments which could 
move it there were none more tumultuous and excitable. 

1 Coni. App. i. 22. 

1 S 


24 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Rome was aware of this: the two first emperors, Julius and 
Augustus Caesar, always knew how to deal with it; but 
their moderation was unable to prevent all collision ; 
administrative needs continually came in conflict with 
Jewish demands; and the annual collection of taxes was 
a permanent occasion of conflict. In his earlier years, 
Tiberius continued the policy of his predecessors. A good 
shepherd, he said, in his selfish wisdom, shears his sheep, but 
takes care not to flay them. 1 He did not often change his 
procurators; knowing the profound corruption of man, he 
was aware of their greed, and said of them with disdain: 
“If you scare away the flies which devour the blood of a 
wounded man, so soon as they are satisfied, those who 
replace them will suck the wound with new avidity.” 2 

However, towards the tenth year of his reign a scandalous 
event excited the whole aristocracy of Rome. Some Jews 
having been discovered in an act of swindling and rascality, 3 
the old hatred which always slept in the heart of the Gentiles 
burst out against the entire nation. The minister Sejanus 
was made the instrument of the public anger, and swore to 
exterminate the detested race. Tiberius, now grown old in 
his luxurious Capreae, allowed his powerful minister to do 
as he pleased. The Jewish colonists soon felt the influence 
of what was passing in the metropolis, and Pilate was chosen 
towards the year 26 to succeed Valerius Gratus in Judaea. 

The procurators who for twenty years had governed the 
country, had avoided wounding the religious sentiment too 
violently. Thus they never brought to Jerusalem the 
standards of the legions on which was the image of the 
emperor. This concession seemed a weakness to Pilate, 

1 Tacit., Ann. xi. 42. 

2 Suet., Nero , 32. 

3 Antiq. xviii. 4. This was in connection with the conversion of a great 
Roman lady, named Fulvia. Three or four Jews made profit of this with 
unexampled cleverness and audacity. The husband, Saturninus, dis¬ 
covered the matter and denounced them to the prefect. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I25 


whose first act, when he took possession of his government, 
was a violent outrage. He ordered the garrison to enter 
the city with their standards by night. The people, aware 
of the event, ran in crowds from Jerusalem to Caesarea, 
besieging Pilate for five days and five nights with entreaties 
that he would remove the abomination from the Holy City. 
On the sixth day the procurator desired the people to come 
to the Circus, whither at the same time he had sent a 
detachment of soldiers. The Jews began their supplications 
again; and on a given sign the soldiers, with drawn swords, 
advanced upon the multitude from all sides. The Jews 
remained immovable, and, baring their breasts, declared that 
they had rather die than survive the violation of their Law. 
Pilate was afraid; and gave an order to withdraw the 
standards from Jerusalem, 1 but, as if in obedience to an 
order from high quarters, he renewed his acts of violence, 
thus provoking an increase of revulsion and bitterness 
against Rome. 

When the life of a people is threatened every sentiment 
is exaggerated. The Gentiles did not only seem oppressors 
to the Jews, but impious ; not only the enemies of Israel, but 
the enemies of God: intercourse with them was a stain. 
Religious hatred, most terrible and implacable of passions, 
silently pursued them, for ever calling down upon them 
the chastisement and vengeance of Jehovah. This hatred 
brooded in the heart of the people and in the party of the 
highest Pharisees. 

Any other nation, finding itself thus oppressed, would have 
yielded to force and resigned itself to the yoke : the Jew 
allowed himself to be repulsed and crushed, but did not yield ; 
and, save a few Sadducees whom their ignoble interests 
attached to the procurators, all, even in the depths of their 
national distress, had faith in better days. Their hope grew 

1 Antiq. xviii. 3, 1 ; Bell. Jud. ii. 9, 2, 3. 


126 


JESUS CHRIST. 


with oppression, and was nourished by those very events 
which were so sad, humiliating, and painful. 

Certain books were much read : Judith, the Maccabees, 
Daniel, Enoch, the Little Psalter of Solomon,, the great 
collection of Psalms. There is always an oral or written 
literature which, in harmony with events, upholds the ideal 
of a people. Men were steeped in memories of the brave 
Maccabees and their glorious struggle; sought with enthu¬ 
siasm for the riddle of the Apocalyptic books; loved to see 
the magnificent pictures descriptive of the successive fall of 
the great empires around Israel, still unshaken and untamed ; 
they knew by heart the Little Psalter of Solomon, and the 
national songs of that great collection wherein the whole heart 
of the people beat. They borrowed from their divine poetry 
their groans, their tears, their sufferings, their curses, their 
patience; in it learned how to turn aside justice and hasten 
vengeance, how to implore, to hope, to call upon God, and, in 
a word, how to live. 

In spite of all, and before the Romans their conquerors 
and masters, the Jews chose to live ; for they believed in their 
vast destiny. One idea, indeed, transcended and summed 
up all the others, in the years wherein began their death 
agony: the Kingdom of God was at hand, and Messiah, their 
future King, was at last about to appear. That hope which 
for ages had seemed the inheritance and law of the prophets, 
but which arose in the heart of the people only in critical 
hours, as the rainbow in the storm, now became the property 
of all. Never, even under Egyptian slavery and Babylonian 
exile ; under the Seleucidae, and Antiochus most brutal of 
all, had this dominating thought been more vigorous and 
impetuous. To whatever party men belonged, except the 
Sadducees ; whether Pharisaic or Herodian ; to whatever 
school men were attached, whether that of Hillel or that of 
Shammai; in whatever social rank they were, priests and 
elders, doctors and scribes, Ebionites and publicans, all were 
moved and excited. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 127 

When an idea takes vehement and passionate hold of a 
nation, it is seldom understood by all in the same way. It 
is modified, finely shaded, and altered to suit the prejudices, 
interests, and instincts of the moment. The idea of the 
Messiah among the Jews did not escape this fortune; in the 
mind of the lukewarm Sadducee it was other than in the 
soul of the ardent Pharisee; it was conceived in one way 
by the scribe or the legist absorbed in the Torah, and 
by the Haggadist irritated against Roman impiety ; by 
the man of the people, blinded by superstition ; by the 
pious Jew who lived in quiet expectation of the consum¬ 
mation of Israel; by the Jew of Palestine, and the Jew of 
Alexandria. 

No one doubted that the Kingdom of God was about to 
be established; but public opinion was divided as to the 
manner of it. The high priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, 
and even the partisans of Judas the Gaulonite ; for different 
reasons, by prudence and selfishness, or a false interpretation 
of the Scriptures; imagined that Messiah was the same as 
Israel, and that the Kingdom of God meant obedience to the 
Law; they did not see that this Kingdom was incompatible 
with submission to a Roman governor, residing at Antioch, 
and a procurator established at Caesarea. 

These doctrines exactly rendered the hopes of the 
aristocratic class, of all those preoccupied with themselves, 
who regulated their ideas so as not to trouble their selfish 
tranquillity, and dreamt that the future would be a continua¬ 
tion of the past. That Jerusalem should be more magnificent, 
that the Temple treasury should increase in wealth, that the 
blood of victims should run in floods into the brazen laver, 
that the porches should be encumbered by increasing 
crowds, that the elders should be more honoured and tithes 
more abundant, that the pulpits in the synagogues should have 
a larger audience, that the teaching of the masters should 


128 


JESUS CHRIST. 


extend to the Gentiles, that proselytes should flock in, and 
the whole world should know the God of Israel: such was 
for them the true Kingdom of God. 

This indifference, this easy resignation to their political 
servitude, this passive expectation of a glorious morrow, were 
not made for zealous, ardent, and liberal souls, such as many 
were among the Jews, and even in the bosom of the Pharisaic 
party, those who joined an eager desire for national greatness 
with their attachment to the Law, confounding the two things 
in the same vehement affection. From their ranks sprang 
the Maccabees, the six thousand who refused, under Herod, 
to take the oath of loyalty at the occasion of the census of 
which St. Luke speaks; Judas the Gaulonite, and the rabbi 
Sadok, and later, the Kanain, the Zealots; the party of 
armed revolution, irreconcilables, whose watchword was: No 
master but God ! no taxes ! taxes are the sign of slavery. 1 

These expected a warrior Messiah, a true King to whom 
God would give the power of shaking off the Roman yoke, of 
subduing the infidels to Israel, and of establishing the law of 
Moses on a whole subject world. The political absorbed the 
religious element; they found a faithful and clear echo in the 
people and in the ardent youth of the nation. At every 
moment they threatened a rising of the country ; whenever a 
measure contrary to religion was taken by the Governor they 
were excited, fomenting everywhere popular passions with a 
daring which feared neither torture nor death. 

Superstitions in regard to the Messiah and his kingdom 
flourished in their fulness in the illiterate mass. Imaginations 
were inflamed by reading the apocalyptic books. It was 
expected that a wondrous being would appear in the clouds, 
some said that he was even now, though hidden, ready to 
shine forth as the lightning, to exercise a sovereign judgment 


1 Bell. Jud. viii. 6; Ant. xviii. I, I. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 129 


on the people overthrown by him, and that then a long era of 
happiness would begin. Others expected two Messiahs : one 
who should fight and suffer, and be conquered, another who 
should carry off the glory of triumph. This idea contributed 
not a little to excite the ambition of those unsubdued Zealots 
who thought themselves called to be the combating and 
sorrowful Messiah. 

It would, however, be an error to believe that in the time 
of Jesus the Jews of Palestine only saw in the Messiah an 
earthly hero, and in his career a political work. However 
powerful such an illusion might be in the cultivated class and 
in the multitude, it had not eclipsed the divine and religious 
element in the Messianic idea. 

Among the documents which give us most information 
on the idea of the Messiah and of his Kingdom among 
the best Jews, we must quote the Book of Enoch, and the 
Little Psalter of Solomon. In the Book of Enoch, 1 greatly 
esteemed among those whose ideas it expressed, the Messiah 
was called “ the Elect, the Anointed, the Son of Man,” and 
even “ the Son of God.” According to the author, he was the 
equal of the angels, and, inasmuch as he was the Son of God, 
he seemed to hold, near him, the place which Philo assigned 
to the “ Logos.” The Son of Man dwelt by him who was the 
beginning of days ; 2 he was seated on the throne of glory, by 
the side of God ; 3 all were to invoke him, and he was to rule 
over all. 4 His destiny would be that of a prophet, a teacher, 
and a judge; in him dwelt the spirit of wisdom and under¬ 
standing, truth, power, and the spirit of those who are no 
more. He was to be the last of the prophets; his influence 
was to extend to all nations, he was to be the light of the 


1 Das Buck Henoch, iibersetzt von Dillmann, Leipzig, 1853. 

2 Ibid. 46, 1, &c. 

8 Ibid. 55. 4 ; 69, 29. 

* Ibid. 48, 5; 62, 6. 


130 


JESUS CHRIST. 


prophets and the hope of the afflicted, 1 he was to judge 
hidden things, on the throne of the majesty of God, and not 
men only, but the fallen angels, Azazel and all his hosts. 
After the judgment, heaven and earth would be renewed, 
reserved for the Messianic age, and inaccessible to sinners. 
The Jews of Palestine did not expect the sorrowful advent 
of Messiah, they had no idea of his death and glorious 
return; Messiah never dies, they said, but is eternal as the 
throne of David which he will restore. 

The same ideas, with less grandeur and purity, are to be 
found in the most ancient Targums, those of Onkelos and of 
Jonathan; we shall find in them the same causes of political 
and religious tumult, always active among those Jews who 
could not resign themselves to the failure of the sceptre of 
their race, and who, when they lost their independence, 
remembered the great prophecy of the patriarch Jacob when 
he died, crying aloud through all the ages : He will come, but 
only at the time when the sceptre shall have departed from 
Judah. 2 

Among the pious and peaceful, the humble and silent, the 
hopes of Israel kept their purity; these did not restrict nor 
divert the action of the Spirit by their prejudices and 
passions; they did not curse the Gentiles, but left vengeance 
to God ; they knew that, according to the word of the 
prophets, they should be delivered from their enemies, but 
they did not think of reducing their masters to slavery, nor 
lulled themselves with vain terrestrial ambitions ; they waited 
for the consolation of their people, and saw in the promised 
Messiah the advent of the Very God, Emmanuel and the Son 
of God ; he who should be a light to lighten the Gentiles, a 
just judge, and the glory of his people Israel. 

They did not attempt to penetrate the unknown, and 
understand how all this should be accomplished ; the designs 

1 Das Buck Henoch, iiberseizt von Dillmann, Leipzig (1853), 48, 4. 

2 Gen. xlix. 10. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 131 

of God transcend our powers and are only understood when 
realized, for they bear their light in and with themselves. 
Eager souls experience the excitement of those who are 
consumed by impatient desire. Such a handful of men was 
a strange and touching spectacle before the almighty power 
of Rome ; never had they been weaker, never had their 
ambition been higher. They wished for universal empire, 
which the Romans held themselves to possess ; but while 
the Romans only looked for a reign of force, they wished 
for the reign of their God, and thronged round his temple, 
as round their last fortress. They eagerly asked their 
teachers when the Saviour should come, and the scribes 
answered that it was their own sins that delayed the day 
of deliverance and consolation ; they were not yet worthy 
of the help of God. 

The deliverer came not. In fact the masters knew 
nothing; their answer was only a stupid formula intended 
to cover the emptiness of their thought under an appearance 
of religion and humility. The people were not satisfied; 
they were ready for a revolt at any moment, determined to 
follow whomsoever might lead them ; their ears were open 
to the least appeal, to the gentlest voice. The soul of a 
nation is like that of an individual, it has its hours of 
slackness or violent tension, of calm and storm. Judah, since 
the deposition of the ethnarch Archelaus, was passing through 
one of these crises. 

Then, there appeared in Israel a man destined to interpret 
to his country, troubled by parties, and bending under the 
Gentile yoke, led astray by passion and prejudice, the thought 
and the designs of God. He was about to make the prophets 
live again, though their voice had been silent for more than 
four hundred years, and the Pharisees thought only of 
building their sepulchres; he was to catch their accent, when 
he spoke of virtue, of the future, and of national duty; like 


132 


JESUS CHRIST. 


all men sent by Providence, he was to be the genius and the 
conscience of a whole country, genius to see aright, con¬ 
science to command the good ; he was to answer to the most 
earnest desires of all: hence his power; hence the extent and 
rapidity of his action. 

Men not in touch with the life of their age are incapable 
of awakening any echo; the crowd neither hears nor under¬ 
stands them, they remain powerless and barren, as the crowd 
remains indifferent and absent. Those whom God sends 
come at the right time ; earth moves beneath their step, 
their word has power and their works live. 

John was of the race of prophets, and the greatest of all. 
Chosen from his mother’s womb ; the son of a priest, and of a 
priestly family, he did not grow up to succeed Zacharias in 
the Temple services. Custom may enchain common natures ; 
those whom God predestines are swayed by the will of the 
Spirit. John certainly knew of his relationship to Jesus and 
Mary; it does not appear that he had ever seen him whose 
forerunner he was to be; but he had heard from the mouth of 
his mother how his own birth had been marked by divine 
signs, and he knew the future that was prophesied at his 
cradle. He lived and grew as a being set apart, a “Nazir” ; 
no earthly influence was to touch his soul, dedicated to so 
high a mission. 

He dwelt in the desert, listening to the inner voice of the 
Spirit, and growing strong by it; the vigour of his inspiration 
lifted him above his time and surroundings. He broke 
through all that hemmed him in ; we do not find in him 
the mark of any school, the imprint of any caste, the sign 
of any party. Some thought that they saw in him, as also in 
Jesus, an Essene ; but he had neither their dogmas, nor 
customs, nor dress, nor tendency; he did not live with others 
in community, he was a solitary. To find any like him, we 
must go back to Elijah the Tishbite and Isaiah ; both of 
whom lived again in him ; in his long years of solitude he 











































JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 133 

was penetrated by memories of them, the figure of Elijah 
was to shine before him as the type of a prophet, he had the 
same indomitable courage, the same vehemence. The pro¬ 
phecies of Isaiah must have been the book he loved best; 
the few words which history has recorded of him recall the 
most eloquent and the most lucid of the Messianic prophets. 

Evil grieved and angered him, for he knew its depth and 
horror ; he did not flatter, but rebuked ; did not console, but 
terrified; inflexible in character, he feared nothing; neither 
the people, nor the great, nor princes ; his sincerity was 
unbending; he had the gift of moving and penetrating 
consciences; an heroic penitent, he had that austerity which 
impresses the crowd. No prophet ever uttered more loudly 
than he the word which befits nations crushed by the justice 
of God, “ Repent ”; yet this moral censor, this herald of re¬ 
pentance and the terrible judgment of God, never bent under 
the weight of the vices which he scourged, he was no de¬ 
spondent pessimist, but a man of hope. He saw the Kingdom 
of God approaching, and announced its advent; but, far from 
flattering his country by this news which summed up all the 
ambitions of Israel, he marked in a severe tone the means of 
obtaining it. The title of son of Abraham was of scant 
avail, it was necessary to have the virtues of Abraham; no 
good could come without the submission of man to God. He 
had a vivid imagination and his energetic utterances carried 
conviction ; he had that passion for good which gives irre¬ 
sistible eloquence. 

His whole life was a living sermon ; he was bound by no 
ties to the degenerate world to which he brought good 
tidings; he did not quit the desert, he knew only the voice of 
God speaking to his conscience and that desolate nature 
which also spoke the language of God. His dress recalled 
that of his master Elijah: a tunic of camel’s hair, and a 
leathern girdle about his loins ; his meat was locusts cooked 
on stones, and wild honey from the crevices of the rocks. 


134 


JESUS CHRIST. 


He drank no wine, but quenched his thirst in the mountain 
brook; like the prophets of the school of Elijah, he dwelt 
neither in the town nor in houses, but in the caves of the 
desert mountain. 

A grotto, which was perhaps the first dwelling-place of his 
wandering life, is pointed out even at this day, to the west of 
Ain-Karim; it is hollowed out of the live rock, on the eastern 
flank of the valley of Beit-Anina; there is a fountain about 
two yards above the grotto, which waters everything around 
it; the grass is green, the lemon trees are in flower, and a 
carob spreads its dark boughs; the torrent, swollen in time of 
flood, murmurs at the bottom of the gorge. Opposite, on the 
western bank, is a little Arab village ; a spring has attracted a 
few fellahs to that place. A little to the left, half way up the 
hill, is a thicket of green trees, a venerated spot where, 
according to the tradition of the country, the bodies of the 
two valiant Maccabees, slain in fight, were for a while 
deposited. The spot is rough and naked; the horizon walled 
in; the traveller feels hemmed in by the two sides of the 
valley which almost meet, and it is necessary to look up to 
heaven, which as it overarches seems to enlarge the whole. 
The rocks, the torrent, the sombre valley, are fully in harmony 
with the austere person who dwelt there. The echo of that 
powerful voice which cried “God cometh; prepare his ways; 
repent,” still sounds in the desert; we seem to hear it above 
the roar of the wind and the murmur of the waters of Beit- 
Anina. 


CHAPTER II, 


RELIGIOUS ACTION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. THE 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 

The year 27 was a sabbatical year. 1 Agricultural life was 
suspended, men neither reaped nor sowed; the fields were 
fallow ; the earth, herds, and herdsmen were all at rest. The 
fruits grew of themselves without cultivation, and belonged to 
the poor, who had thus a year of liberty, abundance, and joy. 
The synagogues were more frequented at the feast-days and 
at the hours of prayer; the roads to Sion were traversed by 
more numerous caravans, the pulpits of the doctors were more 
surrounded. Less absorbed by work, the crowd which in the 
East loves long conversations and life in the open air, gave 
itself up to all the religious and political preoccupations of 
which the ardour was on the increase. 

It was then that John revealed himself to the people. He 
did not appear in the public places nor at the gates of the 
town, he did not show himself at Jerusalem, in the squares of 
the Holy City nor under the porches of the Temple; the 
apostle remained the anchorite, under the sway of the Spirit 
in his desert, that Spirit of which he loved to declare himself 
the voice. 2 He who has not seen the land where John the 
Baptist arose as a prophet can scarcely understand his rude 
speech, his bold images, his cry powerful as lion’s roar. 

1 See Appendix A : General Chronology of the Life of Jesus. 
a Isaiah xl. 3; Matt. iii. 3, and paral.; John i. 23. 


136 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The country spreads from the shores of the Dead Sea to 
the confines of Samaria, and is about 60 miles in length, with a 
breadth of not quite five miles. From the summit of the hill 
called Khan el-Ahmar, the red caravanserai, it resembles, in 
its savage grandeur, a troubled sea whose waves have been 
suddenly petrified. The soil is thrown into numerous 
hillocks, separated by little valleys; here and there the deeper 
Wadys are the beds of torrents rushing from the mountains 
of Judaea. The Mount of Olives rises above the other hills 
towards the west, on the east is the deep valley of the Jordan, 
which lies like a gulf between the last undulations of the 
mountains of Judah and the high escarpments of Moab. 
There is scarce a tree in this blazing solitude, scarce a blade 
of grass on the worn rock whose chalky strata show that 
the soil has been upturned by volcanic eruptions. There is 
scarce a village ; only, far off on the west, Aboudis, and on the 
north Tayebeh. A long white line winds towards the Mount 
of Olives, and marks the road from Jericho to Jerusalem 
traversed for ages by caravans, which John must have often 
taken; the silence is profound, the traveller feels himself 
alone, and overwhelmed by this nature all the more religious 
because it is silent and desolate. On the side of the hill a 
flame-coloured tint gives a strong note of colour in this desert 
where all is so light, and all half-tones are lost in that 
clearness which in the East wraps the whole immensity of 
earth and sky, and gives infinite sharpness and depth to the 
horizon. 

Places have their predestined fates ; and this place suited 
the genius of the prophet. John wandered through it from 
north to south, from east to west; his route lay by the roads 
from Engedi and the shores of the Dead Sea as far as 
Tayebeh, from the Grotto of Ain-Karim to the Jordan. He 
addressed his burning words to those who passed by in cara¬ 
vans ; he did not seek the crowd like the ancient prophets, but 
attracted them to him. Those who heard him were moved ; 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 137 

they returned to their town or village, stirred to the depths by 
the words of the solitary, and in telling what had so moved 
them they spread his name and awakened the curiosity of 
the people. 

Soon, in Judaea and Samaria, in Galilee and the country 
beyond Jordan, men talked only of John the Baptist. His 
past duty was clear to his conscience; he felt with a divine 
certainty that he was the messenger of God and the imme¬ 
diate forerunner of Christ: all his words breathed that 
conviction. The great work which God had prepared for so 
many years, in the secret of which he had initiated his 
prophets from age to age, of which Israel kept the hope and 
for the realisation of which it cried aloud : this work of 
God’s bowels of mercy, the salvation of the world, “ the light 
to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of the true sons of 
Abraham,” was about to appear. John knew and saw 
and declared it; he had not learned it in books, nor in the 
schools of the wise, nor by observing the social, political, and 
religious state of his nation: this son of the desert did not 
read, rarely studied, went not among men ; but the word of 
God was on him, and inspiration illumined him. Every genius 
rises by it, in divers degrees, according as God wills to initiate 
them into the mystery of his creation and of his impenetrable 
will. The divine light does not remain hidden in the con¬ 
science into which it penetrates, it is only given to shine out 
and spread abroad, and it always answers to the profound 
needs and troubles of the moment. 

The first duty of John was to announce that the Kingdom 
of God was at hand. No word was more likely to strike and 
move; to force the attention, and carry away men’s minds. 
At that point of extreme tension to which the ardour of hope 
deferred, and the sadness of an overwhelming oppression had 
brought the Jews, the voice of the new prophet rang out like 
a cry of deliverance; it marked a new and decisive page in 


38 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the destinies of Israel, hope was over, and reality began to 
appear. The Pharisees, so often beaten and discouraged, 
looked sadly to the future; and, seeing their hopes always 
deceived, they attempted to explain the delays of God. The 
more eager were excited, and aspired only to break the yoke 
of the Gentiles by armed rebellion. They proclaimed to 
the people that God would only come and his kingdom be 
established in the days that they should shake off this 
impious slavery. 

John was free from the uncertainty of the one party and the 
fanaticism of the other. The Lord is at hand, he said, and 
comes to reign and judge. Whose fan is in his hand, and he 
will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into 
his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable. 1 

Under this metaphorical and popular language he revealed 
the divine attributes of the Messiah, who with features at 
once consoling and terrible, consoling for those who were like 
the wheat, terrible for those empty and barren souls which he 
compared to chaff. His voice from time to time grew gentler, 
and he said of the Messiah: “All flesh shall see the salvation 
of God.” 2 

When the crowd asked where the Messiah was, he 
answered again: “ There standeth one among you, whom ye 
know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before 
me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” 3 

At the appeal of the new prophet, moved by the vigour of 
his word and the clearness of his declaration, the entire 
nation rose. The desert was filled with his voice, the solitary 
ways were blocked by the crowd which came from all parts 
to seek and follow after the anchorite. 

It is easy to startle men, to command their attention, and 

1 Matt. iii. 12. 

3 Luke iii. 6. 

3 John i. 26, 27. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 1 39 

excite their curiosity, to rouse their religious and political 
passions, but the messenger of God has a nobler ambition, he 
must penetrate the very depths of the soul, master the will, 
and carry conviction to heart and mind. Such a work can 
only proceed by the intervention of God. In giving to 
his prophets sanctity and the heroic love of good, he gives 
them also a voice which is vibrating with his own breath, the 
only voice capable of reforming, of inspiring hatred of evil, 
and desire for virtue. The sanctity of John shone through 
the whole of his being, and men saw in him one dedicated 
to God. The austerity of his life made him into a super¬ 
human person; his way to the conscience was open, no 
prophets before him had entered it more triumphantly. The 
seer in him was united to the reformer, and while the seer 
satisfied the hopes of the people, the reformer carried them 
with him and taught them the knowledge of salvation. 

This knowledge, which consisted solely in the preparation 
for the Kingdom of Messiah, was summed up by him in two 
elements: one virtue, repentance; one rite, baptism accom¬ 
panied by the confession of sins. In this we are far from the 
prejudices of the Pharisees and the revolutionary doctrines of 
Judas the Gaulonite and the Zealots. 

Do not nurse a vain illusion, he seemed to say to all who 
came to him ; not by legal righteousness and by observances 
will you render yourselves worthy of the Kingdom of God ; 
not by armed rebellion against the Gentile yoke will you 
hasten the advent of the Saviour. He comes at his own 
lime, and the time is at hand ; no power can hinder God ; man 
must wait on him, and, when he comes, must receive him. 

Now, in order that the work of God may be accomplished, 
man must share in it, must renounce his prejudice, his vice, 
his passions, evil in all its forms; what John called repentance 
was to confess sin and do penance. Without repentance no 
evolution is possible in good, no transformation of the soul. 
This is the universal law of moral progress, and had to be 
16 


140 


JESUS CHRIST. 


announced at the very time when Christ was to work out 
in the world the highest evolution and the supreme trans¬ 
formation of mankind. It was the honour of John to have 
formulated this with a power which nothing can equal, at 
a moment unparalleled in history. 

To his doctrine of repentance he added a rite which was 
to be its symbol and public profession. In the East, especially, 
nothing connected with religion is accomplished without a 
visible sign which speaks to the senses and strikes the imagi¬ 
nation. In instituting his baptism, John was certain to find 
himself in harmony with the temperament and customs of 
his people, and to give to his action a new power. Yet the 
rite ordained by the Baptist was peculiarly his own, and 
must not be confounded with the daily baptism of the Essenes 
nor with that of the proselytes ; the one only gave an 
entirely legal purification which was .never the object of the 
religious thoughts of John, the other was the sign of the 
incorporation of the Gentile with the people of the covenant. 
The baptism of John was a solemn profession of penitence, 
a sign of an inward ablution, and that purity of conscience 
without which the Kingdom of God can neither be received 
nor founded. No doubt it was only inspired by the very 
vocation of the prophet; who came from God and imposed it 
as a duty on all those who awaited in righteousness the 
advent of Messiah. 1 

The confession of sins demanded by the Baptist before 
and during immersion, was familiar to the Jews. The Law, 
in certain cases, made this a solemn obligation. On the day 
of expiation the high priest, in the name of the people, 
laid upon the head of the scapegoat all the sins of Israel. 
Moses and the prophets, in their ardent zeal for the salvation 
of the people, were wont to carry before God the weight of 
their sins ; and Joel cried to the priests with a loud voice to 


1 Mark xi. 30. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I41 

“ Weep between the porch and the altar,” 1 for the faithlessness 
of the nation. It was a conviction rooted in the Jewish 
conscience, of which we find a trace in Philo and the writings 
of the rabbis, that penitence, joined to the confession of 
sins, would draw down the blessing of God, and that it was 
the condition of the advent of Messiah. 

While at this time the Pharisees boasted their righteous¬ 
ness, and the Essenes their legal purity, both forgetting the 
law of repentance, John recalled it to the people and thus 
showed himself free from the errors of his contemporaries 
and faithful to the inspiration of the prophets, the true 
representatives of the Spirit of God. 

After having wandered some time in the desert, preaching 
his doctrine, and calling the crowd to his baptism, John 
descended to the plain of the Jordan and the banks of the 
river. The plain of the Jordan 2 begins about 300 yards above 
the level of the sea, at the foot of the mountains of the desert 
of Judah, is gloomy, uninhabited, almost uncultivated. The 
Lake of Tiberias bounds it on the north, the Dead Sea on the 
south, the mountains of Moab and Ajalon on the east. The 
nearer we approach to the Dead Sea the more sterile is the 
soil. Jericho, verdant, and watered by the well which is now 
called the fountain of Elisha, appears as an oasis under its 
bananas, palms, and roses. All around the land is yellow and 
grey, here and there are a few zakkoum, a sort of wild olive, 
and thickets of a thorny shrub which the Arabs call sidr. 3 In 
the midst of the plain, between Judaea and Peraea, a long 
white line marks the valley at the bottom of which the Jordan 
cleaves its course, its waters flowing through a friable nitreous 
soil, which they have eaten away for thousands of years. This 
soft soil has been worn into strange and varied shapes ; we 

1 Joel ii. 17. 

2 El-Gohr, as it is called by the Arabs. 

* The Rhamnus Naoeca of botanists. 


142 


JESUS CHRIST. 


may easily imagine that we see old buildings in ruin, the 
foundations of walls, crumbling towers, shapeless remains of a 
town devastated by war, by lightning, and by age. The days 
are burning hot, the nights warm and luminous. Long after 
the sun has disappeared, a gleam like the Milky Way floods 
the western sky, which is studded with innumerable stars. On 
the horizon, level with the earth, they sparkle as at their 
zenith, like lighthouses on the shores of a sleeping sea. 
Every evening clouds of birds traverse the valley with great 
sound of wings, the silence is only broken by them, and by 
the dull roar of the stream. 

Such was the district traversed by John the Baptist, when 
he left his desert and directed his course towards the Jordan. 
“ Make ready,” he repeated incessantly, “ prepare ye the way 
of the Lord.” 1 He compared the soul to the desert which he 
traversed, hinting that God was about to enter the sterile and 
desolate soul. A road must be opened for him. “ Make his 
paths straight,” he cried, not winding and stony, as those by 
which we come; “ every valley shall be exalted, and every 
mountain and hill shall be made low; ” you who are dis¬ 
couraged and cast down, raise yourselves; ye who are vain 
and proud, become low. Let your will be right and pure ? 
your soul serene and rightly balanced, then you will see the 
“ Salvation of God.” 2 By this word he designated the Messiah. 

His searching exhortations inspired repentance ; crowds 
came to make public confession of their sins and to wash 
themselves in sign of penitence, in the waters of Jordan. 
Disciples gathered round the Baptist, repeated his teachings, 
and aided his ministry. Like all religious teachers he taught 
them how to pray, 3 laid upon them very severe fasts, 4 and 
called them to penitence and sacrifice. These were men 


1 Matt, iii 3. 

2 Luke iii. 6. 

8 Luke xi. 1 ; v. 33. 

4 Mark ii. 18. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I43 

sprung from the people whose life, become austere in the 
school of their master, presented a very fervent model of 
Jewish piety. 

We cannot find in the whole history of Israel, nor perhaps 
in that of any people, a like movement towards holiness . 1 The 
lower and despised classes, soldiers, publicans, tax-gatherers, 
and harlots, thronged round this new prophet of repentance. 
The priesthood seemed for a while to view his action with 
favour , 2 but neither the Sadducees, Pharisees, nor doctors, 
accepted the baptism to which John invited them . 3 The first, 
enemies of all novelty, disdained the rite instituted by a man 
whose mission they did not accept; the others, trusting to their 
legal sanctity, were not among those who beat the breast; 
always satisfied with themselves, they could not publicly 
confess faults to which they knew themselves strangers. The 
inexorable rigour of the ascetic irritated them ; they soon saw 
in him only a fanatic given over to the spirit of Beelzebub. 
But popular opinion, carried away by John, received his word 
more favourably. It is a law of the history of the Gospel that 
when God works, he disdains the great and wise and turns to 
the ignorant and lowly ; he sets aside those who believe them¬ 
selves righteous and calls the sinners whose sincerity merits 
forgiveness. 

The austere reformer grew gentle as he preached to 
the humble; his counsels breathed peace. He spoke of 
righteousness to the tax-gatherers and said : “ Exact no more 
than that which is appointed you.” And the soldiers like¬ 
wise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do ? “ And 

he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse 
any falsely ; and be content with your wages. And to all 
he said, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him 

1 Cf. Antiq. xviii. 1, 2. 

2 John v. 35. 

Luke vii. 30 ; Matt. xxi. 3 2 - 


144 JESUS CHRIST. 

that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do 
likewise .” 1 

He had the gift of reading souls, and that supreme art 
which, joining clear-sightedness to justice and charity, knows 
how to speak a word in season to all. His indignation 
against hypocrisy and pride showed itself with implacable 
vigour; he one day saw mingled with the crowd many 
Pharisees and Sadducees who came to his baptism, and 
could not contain himself, discovering hidden in the one their 
false piety, and in the others scepticism and Epicurean luxury. 
He recognised in them those envenomed tongues which 
dropped among the people the poison of false doctrines 
concerning the Kingdom of God, the expected Messiah, 
holiness and righteousness. His conscience was roused. “ O 
generation of vipers,” he said, “ who hath warned you to flee 
from the wrath to come ? Bring forth therefore fruits meet 
for repentance.” In seeing the religious pride with which they 
resisted God and his justice, he added : “ And think not to say 
within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father : for I say 
unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children 
unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root 
of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire .” 2 

Thus by the mouth of his prophet, God scourged the 
prejudices of the rulers of the people, making them see 
in the light of his inspired word the severity of that 
justice which no man can escape. Rome in his thought was 
the hand of God, menacing Israel with total destruction; and 
in the great day of judgment, Messiah himself was the 
sovereign agent of the last vengeance. Gentle towards the 
righteous and humble, John was inexorable to the haughty 
and proud. The freedom of his words spared nothing; a 
supernatural force animated him; so that he gained the 

1 Luke iii. n, &c. 

3 Luke iii 7-9. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I45 

esteem of the people and his renown increased; for there 
is an innate need of justice at the bottom of the popular 
conscience. It seems consoled when a disinterested voice 
declares without fear or weakness the misdeeds of the 
powerful; opinion bends before those who are devoured with 
a passion for good; sanctity raises an aureole around them, 
and, in spite of their worldly insignificance, they appear before 
the powers that be as though invested with the authority of God. 

From the depths of his desert this poor anchorite moved his 
age. Everything paled before the bright and severe figure of 
the prophet, whose every word was scathing to vice, called to 
holiness, threatened, and raised the hopes of the nation, and 
whose heroic sanctity gave strength to his word. Elijah had 
indeed come again; the multitude, which takes everything 
literally, believed this, and asserted it in its new enthusiasm. 
One of the popular superstitions of the time was faith in the 
return and new life of great prophets at the Messianic era : 
men asked themselves if John were not one of the prophets, 
and a few in secret pondered whether he were not the Christ . 1 

When a man arises from the midst of the people and, by 
the initiative of his genius or inspiration, gains for himself a 
preponderating moral authority, he is always disquieting to 
the authorities. The novelty of his word, the independence 
of his actions, shake the spirit of men and often give umbrage 
to the official representative of social and religious order. 
There is an inevitable conflict between the progressive and 
conservative forces which in turn affect mankind. John 
shook Jewish society too violently to escape the suspicion of 
the Sanhedrin. The great assembly considered itself as the 
guardian of the Law, and called before its tribunal all who 
dared touch upon religious questions without its authority: it 
was excited by the extraordinary influence of the Baptist 
The rude eloquence with which he had belaboured the 
doctors and laid bare the vices of the aristocracy was the 


1 Luke v. 15. 


146 


JESUS CHRIST. 


determining occasion of the action taken against him. Had 
John preached in the towns, or come to Jerusalem, he would 
have been arrested and condemned; it was judged enough to 
send an embassy to the anchorite, with power to interrogate 
him on the mission he claimed . 1 The envoys were priests 
and Levites, among the most rigid of the Pharisaic party. 

“Who art thou? Art thou Elias?” they asked of John. 
In his sincerity, without allowing himself to be uplifted by 
the applause of the multitude, he answered: “ I am not Elias.” 
“What then?” said the messengers. “Art thou that prophet? 
And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, Who art 
thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. 
What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.” 
Those sent were not satisfied. The contentious spirit of the 
Pharisees raised a legal question : “ Why then baptizest thou, 
if thou art not Elias, nor the Christ, nor one of the prophets ? ” 
The doctors, in their science of interpretation, recognised 
that Christ had the right to baptize, according to the saying of 
Ezekiel: 2 “ Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye 
shall be clean from all your filthiness;” and that of Zechariah : 3 
“ In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of 
David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for un¬ 
cleanness; ” and that of Joel : 4 “And all the rivers of Judea 
shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the 
house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim.” 

Elijah, as a forerunner, had also this privilege ; and it was 
not denied to the prophet announced by Moses ; the doctrine 
was recognised. John said to them with that clearness which 
dissipates all uncertainty, and brings light into the heart 
of questions however confused by foolish subtleties: There 

1 John i 19-28. 

a Ezekiel xxxvi. 25. 

8 Zech. xiii. 1. 

1 J oil iii. 18. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 147 

are two baptisms, of water and of the Spirit. “ I baptize with 
water,” Christ with the Spirit. Christ is among you, and ye 
know him not. Then repeating solemnly what he had 
already said to the multitude, he added: “ He it is, who 
coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet 
I am not worthy to unloose.” 1 

We do not know the result of this attempt of the 
Sanhedrin; the prophet continued his penitential baptism 
without disturbance ; increasing popular favour rendered him 
inviolable. It is difficult to lay hands on those whom God 
and the people guard and protect. 

Many months had elapsed from the time that John 
appeared. Established on the eastern bank of the Jordan, in 
a desert place called Bethany, opposite Jericho, near the ford 
which caravans had to pass in entering the south of Peraea, 
towards Heshbon and Macherous, he had seen innumerable 
crowds pass by. Whatever success his mission might have 
among his fellow-citizens, however powerful the religious 
movement he initiated, the prophet understood that his work 
would only attain its highest point on condition that he 
might see and show to the people the expected Messiah, the 
founder of the Kingdom of God. He had come baptizing 
with water, only in order to manifest him to Israel. His eyes 
sought for him, his presentiments called to him, but how 
should he know him, and what sign would reveal him ? An 
inner voice of the Spirit which possessed him, even from the 
womb of his mother, which lived with him in the desert, and 
placed in his mouth the burning words at which all Israel had 
thrilled, said to him : “ He on whom thou shalt see the Spirit of 
God descend is he who shall baptize with the Holy Ghost.” 2 
And John waited for that Holy One, as yet unknown. 

About the end of the year 27, perhaps in the first days of 

1 John i. 26, 27. 

2 John i. 33. 


14B 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the year 28, Galilee, like all the other provinces, was filled with 
the name of John the Baptist; the people of Galilee, under 
the impulse which carried all the Jews with it, came in their 
turn to ask for baptism. This was for Jesus the hour of God. 
The carpenter of Nazareth was thirty years old ; he joined the 
caravans of his country and descended into the valley of 
Jordan. 

The road which leads from Nazareth to the river ford 
where John was preaching, is twenty-five leagues in extent; 
it crosses a part of the plain of Jezreel, follows the Wady 
Djaloud, passes under the walls of Scythopolis, follows the 
mountains of Samaria and Judaea, which close in the plain of 
Jordan to the west, then, bending to the east, it leaves Jericho 
on the right, descends by a gentle slope to the valley of the 
river, and ends at the Jordan, near Bethany, the very place that 
John had chosen for his baptism. 

The place was full of religious memories and carried the 
imagination back to the greatest of the judges, and one of the 
greatest of the prophets. There the Israelites had crossed the 
Jordan dry-foot, and entered with Joshua into the promised 
land ; 1 there the prophet Elijah, accompanied by Elisha his 
disciple, smote the stream with his mantle and opened a 
passage through its rapid waters. 2 The ford is called at the 
present day Maktha, or “ place of passage,” which corresponds 
well to Bethany, the “ house of the boat,” or Bethabara,“ the 
house of the passage/ of St. John. 3 It is situated a league 
and a half from the Dead Sea, and is only about ten yards 
broad ; the river describes an abrupt curve, eating away with its 
waters the high rocks of the eastern bank. The other bank is 
smooth, green, shady, covered with willows, reeds, and tall 
tamarisks planted in thickets. Through the branches of 
these trees with their light foliage we see the arid mountains 

1 Joshua iii. 

* II. Kings ii. 8. 

8 John i. 28. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 149 

at the foot of which were Sodom, Gomorrha,and verdant Jericho. 
They look like a mass of cinders and calcined slag, even in 
January the sky is burning and the atmosphere hot The 
solitude is silent, scarce broken by the cry of a few birds, 
flights of wood-pigeons, and the stifled murmur of the stream. 

Thither came Jesus, lost in the crowd. John knew him not, 
but as Jesus approached a sudden vision revealed him. Above 
the head of Jesus, John saw the heavens open ; and the Spirit 
of God, under the bodily form of a dove, descending and 
lighting upon him. 

This was the expected sign. John then understood that 
which no human knowledge, no genius could teach him; he 
must needs experience one of those unspeakable emotions 
which show that God is there. He saluted Jesus of Nazareth, 
and refused to baptize him, saying, “ I have need to be baptized 
of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said 
unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to 
fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.” 1 

The depth of these words is the guarantee of their 
authenticity; they throw an unexpected light on the soul of 
Jesus, they show that he had a perfect knowledge of his 
Messianic vocation, and that in submitting to the rite 
instituted by John, he already began to realise it. John 
obeyed and baptized him. Jesus was dipped in the water of 
Jordan. Scarcely had he risen from the water, and as he was 
praying apart from the crowd, the vision which had dazzled 
the Baptist was reproduced for Jesus himself. “The heavens 
were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descend¬ 
ing, and lighting upon him, and lo a voice from heaven, 
saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased.” 2 

This act inaugurated the public life of Jesus, revealed his 

1 Matt. iii. 13. 

8 Matt. iii. 13-17 and paral 


JESUS CHRIST. 


ISO 

nature, his divine calling, all his destiny and the power which 
was to lead him. The adversaries of the personal intervention 
of God will never understand its true meaning; and the 
Gospel history, in which this direct and personal intervention 
is a constant force, will be for them a closed book. From 
this time Jesus was no longer the carpenter of Galilee; the 
veil which hid him from the multitude was torn asunder: he 
appeared what he was, the Christ, the Son of God. Yet he 
was to keep in his divine grandeur, a frail nature subject to 
pain and death. Sinner he could never be : born of the Spirit, 
he was of an absolute sanctity, as the principle of the virtue 
in which he was conceived ; but he needed to be humiliated, 
sacrificed, and brought to nought, his first public act was an 
act of abasement; lost in the crowd, he came to demand a rite 
intended for sinners, engaging by that act to submit to the law 
of penance and sacrifice, whereof the baptism of John was the 
symbol. Thus he fulfilled all righteousness; he was the first 
to submit to that law which he was about to impose upon all, 
as the necessary condition of entrance into his Kingdom, and 
he who was to save and regenerate mankind by death, began 
already to enter into death. That the sinner should suffer 
and sacrifice himself was strict justice; that the Holy One of 
God should subject himself to pain and martyrdom was the 
accomplishment of justice by love, the justice of Jesus. 

At the moment when this submission was begun, and in 
virtue of that act, the heavens were opened. The very 
life of God impenetrable and indescribable, closed to every 
creature, that life from which mankind, crushed by evil, could 
no longer draw nourishment, showed itself taking possession 
of the soul of one of its children. The being predestined and 
unknown on whom God visibly descended was not only what 
he appeared to be, a son of man, but also the Son of God. 
The Spirit which dwelt in him, unsuspected, revealed itself 
solemnly and consecrated him before the eyes of the multi- 
ude; henceforward the Messiah could act. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 151 

The greatest men have only their genius, their will, and 
their passions ; amongst the most holy, the inspiration of God 
is added to all these springs of personal energy, an inspiration 
often ephemeral, always limited, which allows the weakness 
of man still to manifest itself ; but this public consecration 
revealed in Jesus the fulness of the Spirit, and this Spirit was 
the sovereign principle of all his thoughts and will, of his 
discourses, actions, and plans. Jesus was to communicate the 
Spirit to us. The scene of his baptism, which contains the 
secret of regeneration, was to reproduce itself even to the end 
of the world ; water was to be one day, by special institution, 
consecrated to be the sacrament of man’s regeneration, and 
the baptism of water was to become the baptism of the Spirit. 
Whoever, at the call of Christ, will quit his vices, his ignorance, 
and his selfishness, through repentance, sacrifice, and faith, 
whoever will enter into the words of Jesus, will see, like him, 
the gates of heaven open, the sons of earth and of corrupt 
mankind will become the sons of God, they will hear in the 
depths of their conscience the Spirit murmur this ineffable 
name, and they will learn of him to call God their Heavenly 
Father. 

The Gospel narrative scarcely allows us to determine how 
far the extraordinary manifestations at the baptism of Jesus 
were known to the multitude. They seem, moreover, to have 
been directly addressed to the Baptist, to him who should 
point out the Messiah, and who found himself elevated by 
them to the height of his great mission. He was not wanting 
to his task. Occasions were to arise, and we shall hear him, 
usually so vehement, moderate his rude voice, and find 
tones of infinite gentleness to reveal his Lord and Master. 

The fact of the baptism of Jesus remained profoundly 
engraven in the memory and conscience of his disciples. It 
was called the “anointing” of Jesus; the primitive apostolic 


152 


JESUS CHRIST. 


teaching, as the Acts have preserved it to us, 1 speaks of it as a 
wondrous sign in which we are to recognise the divine justifi¬ 
cation of the Messiah. Jesus almost immediately left the 
place and disappeared, avoiding the curious throngs of people 
that flocked to the banks of the Jordan; the Spirit which 
filled him led him to the wilderness. 

1 Acts iv. 27 ; x. 38. 


CHAPTER III. 


JESUS IN THE DESERT. THE TEMPTATION. 

THE Gospel narratives do not precisely define the desert into 
which Jesus was led by the Spirit. It is certain, however, that 
the word employed by them, with the article, in the 

singular, and without an epithet, can only mean the desert of 
Judah. 1 The most ancient tradition has always sought for 
and venerated the traces of Jesus in the wild and mountain¬ 
ous region which extends to the west above Jericho as far as 
the heights of Bethany, is bounded on the south by the Wady- 
el-Kelt, and on the north by the Wady Neuahimeh. 

Jesus on quitting Jordan must have crossed the plain of 
Jericho, and, leaving the town to the left, have climbed the 
steep slopes of the mountain now called the “Quarantaine.” 
This rocky bluff is an immense mass of reddish chalk which 
seems to have been calcined by a fire. Its five pyramidal 
crests, separated by deep ravines, form an imposing whole. 
Wind and rain have eaten the stone, and in many places have 
hollowed out caves in its sides, which the hand of the 
solitaries have enlarged. In the middle of the highest peak, 
believers venerate a grotto which gave shelter to Jesus during 
his abode in the wilderness. A path cut out of the rock leads 
to it; a few Greek monks live there, above the world, with the 

1 Matt. iii. i, xi. 7, xxiv. 26; Mark i. 4, 12, 13; Luke iii. 2, viii. 29; 
John xi. 54. 


54 


JESUS CHRIST. 


birds of heaven, rock-pigeons, and eagles. A dazzling pano¬ 
rama is visible from the top of the mountain. On the east 
beyond the plain of Jordan, are Mount Nebo and the high¬ 
lands of Peraea; on the north, Hermon, its head crowned with 
sunlit snow, and lost in the bright sky; to the south, the Dead 
Sea, shining like burnished silver; on the west, the desert-land 
of Judah, on whose innumerable hills the winter rains raise a 
little grass, to be parched by the first summer sun. Jerusalem 
is hidden behind the Mount of Olives, which catches the eye, 
crowned at present by a white tower, like a signal raised 
above the reefs of this ocean of stone. 

The place is at once a desert and a mountain: uniting in 
its grandeur both austerity and majesty. This was probably 
the place whither Jesus retired. The rock served him as a 
refuge; he was there with the wild beasts ; the sky above 
his head was full of light and of divine voices. Amid this 
desolate landscape, memory alone speaks to the traveller who 
wanders there; it fills all things with its murmur. The image 
of Christ as he was in life seems to haunt these hills; we 
follow the inward drama of his thoughts, and gaze with 
veneration on the crumbling rocks on which he perhaps 
reposed. When Jesus looked from these heights at the plain 
of the Jordan which he had recently left, he might have seen 
the crowd thronging all the paths towards him who prepared 
the way ; and he had under his eyes the road from Jericho to 
Jerusalem which, one day, he was to follow, with his disciples, 
on the way to death. 

The sojourn of Jesus in the desert was at first prayer, 
contemplation, and absorption of all his human faculties 
in God his Father. Those who have experienced rapture and 
ecstasy, who have drunk long draughts of divine happiness, 
and have heard, like St. Paul, “the secret words of heaven 
which no man on earth may utter” : l the saints, these only 

1 II. Cor. xii. 4. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 1 55 

can see some rays from the soul of Jesus as they pray, 
contemplate, and adore. He saw, in the will of his 
Father, the greatness and beauty of his future mission ; he 
measured its difficulties, foresaw its pains and sacrifices; on 
the eve of his active life, he entered into all the counsels 
of wisdom, justice, and infinite mercy, to save a lost world. 
His agony on Calvary and death revealed themselves to his 
eyes open to eternal light; he knew the emotions of the soul 
overflowing with the joys of God, and the anguish of a soul 
overwhelmed at the view of the frightful strife which awaited 
him. 

The desert has always had an irresistible attraction for 
religious natures, all have passed through it, as the threshold 
of the active life. Jesus often advised solitude, and sought 
it himself as a condition of prayer, as a means of rest for the 
spirit, and for escaping snares and persecution. 1 In retiring 
thither after his baptism he wished to pass, in his own way, 
through this phase of complete recollectedness which, in 
men of action, precedes the execution of their task. Whoever 
is conscious of a great mission, overwhelmed by the weight of 
responsibility, afraid of his own weakness, loves to fall back 
upon himself in silence. Solitude brings a man near to God, 
purifies his heart and thought, strengthens his manly resolu¬ 
tions, fosters his courage, and nurses his strength. 

Moses sought for God on the solitary summit of Horeb; 2 
Elijah sought in the desert a refuge from men ; 3 John the 
Baptist lived there, growing great and strong in communings 
with the Spirit; 4 Paul lived apart in the uninhabited plains of 
Arabia, to meditate on the words of him who had stricken him 
to earth on the road to Damascus ; 5 and the disciples of 

1 Mark i. 35 - 45 , vi. 37: Luke vi. 12; Matt. xiv. 13. 

2 Exod. iii. 1. 

3 I. Kings xvii. 2. 

4 Matt. iii. and paral. 

6 Gal. i. 17. 


1 7 


156 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the Crucified, fleeing from the corruption of the world, 
absorbed in contemplation and hungering after eternal life, 
were one day to bury themselves there in crowds, in the holes 
of the rocks, in the depths of the Thebaid. 

The destiny of Jesus did not call him to delay long in the 
desert; he only halted there ; he did not come as we come to 
seek for God, for God was ever with him ; nor to listen for his 
word, for this he heard everywhere and at all times, at 
Nazareth as by the Jordan, in the midst of a crowd as in the 
silence of nature; nor to ripen his Messianic plans, for these 
were wholly fixed in the Spirit who was his light, his counsel, 
his impulsive force, always and fully obeyed. 

The greatest among religious men go into the desert to 
seek energy, Jesus retired there to show it; they seek solitude 
and peace, Jesus sought strife; they ask in it a refuge against 
evil, Jesus came there to pray, to endure the assaults of Satan 
and to overcome him. He who had been proclaimed by God 
himself to be the Son of God, could not free himself from the 
sad conditions of humanity; he had already made, in his 
baptism, a public profession of expiation and sacrifice, he 
was to submit himself to the law of trial, under a mysterious 
and difficult form which defies human reason and of which 
the historian must seek to penetrate the enigma. 


Temptation and trial are synonymous terms; and when 
applied to free beings are intended to test their courage and 
virtue. Trial or temptation is an obstacle raised between will 
and duty; will which should act, duty which is the rule and 
end of action. The obstacle can come in the first place from 
our nature, which instinctively revolts from effort and pain, 
sacrifice and death. There is no man whom duty does not 
condemn to suffering and self-denial; to a large number it 
brings protracted pain; on some, the best and bravest, it lays 
the necessity of death. Such is the universal trial of every 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 157 

free being, who seeks for God in the accomplishment of his 
destiny and, in order to attain God, must sacrifice self. 

Whoever has observed and analysed his own nature, can 
easily distinguish in the midst of his noblest aspirations, and 
of his soundest energies, certain disorderly powers which, for 
him and in him, constitute a perpetual temptation to avoid his 
duty and his destiny. Sensuality and pride turn us aside 
from God : one induces us to enjoy without measure or restraint 
all which flatters our earthly passions; the other throws us 
back on ourselves to seek in our spirit and our will the rule 
of our thoughts and the force of our life. These are the two 
forms of selfishness which work most in our double nature: 
the one is the selfishness of matter, refusing to submit itself to 
the spirit and to God; the other is the sensuality of the spirit, 
satisfied with itself, and resisting God, who is the principle of 
matter and spirit. Every human being whom these two 
forces subdue, becomes, in his own sphere, ambitious and 
oppressive; he eagerly desires power, that is to say, to rule 
and bring into subjection, to rule in order to subdue, and to 
subdue in order to rule. Violence and craft, murder and 
lying, threats and flattery, are its code and practical science. 

All the disorders of the passions come from sensuality; 
all the aberrations of the spirit have their source in pride; 
and sensuality and pride have their origin in selfishness or 
inordinate self-love, which leads man to consider himself 
as the centre of all things. This is the evil which eats into 
mankind, hinders its development and constantly troubles 
its peace. 

The assembly of creatures living in this manner constitutes 
the empire of evil, which Jesus calls the world, the world 
which knew him not, 1 and of which he was not, 2 the world 


1 John i. 10. 

2 John xvii. 16. 


t 5 8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


which hated him and his own, 1 and was to be for him and 
for them the agent of a thousand persecutions, but of which 
he said, “ Fear it not, for I have overcome the world.” 2 

This sphere of corruption indeed cannot endure the man 
of just and holy life whose very presence condemns and 
irritates it; whoever is sent of God to accomplish his work in 
the world arouses all the forces of that kingdom whose law is 
selfishness, and wherein temptations arise, which, reserving 
their most formidable assaults for the perfect and the strong, 
hinder the most resolute will. 

We shall never understand the extent and depth of the 
human trial of which the history of Jesus reveals the sorrow¬ 
ful mystery, if we forget that world of spirits superior to man, 
which yet are mingled with his earthly life. 

Nothing in the universe stands alone. As the planet 
in its beginning, its evolution, and smallest transformations, is 
attached to the heavens which envelop it, so man is united 
by his thought, his liberty, his passions, his whole being, to 
spirits whose hierarchy is interposed between him and God. 
A thousand secret suggestions come from them; the religious 
teaching of the Old Testament always sought for the origin of 
evil among these invisible hosts. The spiritual being in whom 
evil has attained its highest expression, sows in man, born 
upright and pure, pride and sensuality, selfishness and death. 
The Gospels call him the Devil, Jesus named him the Evil One, 3 
Satan, 4 the Enemy, 5 the Prince of this World, 6 the Prince of the 
Devils, 7 and a murderer from the beginning. 8 Every man is 
more or less conscious of his fatal attacks ; the secret influence 
of the devil arouses all our unruly instincts and inclinations; 
in a world prone to vice, he exercises an influence the more to 


1 John xv. 18. 

2 John xvi 33. 

8 Matt. xiii. 19. 

4 Matt. iv. 10 and paral. 


5 Matt. xiii. 39. 

6 John xii. 31; xiv. 30; xvi. 11. 

7 Matt. ix. 34; xii. 24 and paral. 

8 John viii. 44. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 1 59 

be dreaded the more it is hidden, and he toils unseen to estab¬ 
lish his own Kingdom in opposition to the Kingdom of God. 

Of all temptations to which mankind as a whole, and in 
each of its members, is subject, there is one only which Jesus 
could not know, that which postulates a nature disturbed by 
sin. There was no disorder in him, no sensuality, no pride, no 
selfishness, no error : evil had no hold on him. He escaped the 
common law ; as he asserted on many occasions, but especially 
in his last familiar conversations with his disciples, when in 
words full of sadness and emotion he said to them: “ I will 
not speak to you longer now, for the prince of this world 
cometh, but he hath no power over me.” 1 It is as though he 
said : He animates the Jews, and I see them coming on me by 
his instigation: he has no power over me, because I am with¬ 
out sin. 2 

Yet if Jesus could not suffer that temptation which implies 
evil in the tempted ; if, on account of his absolute sanctity, he 
never experienced the inward strife of the flesh and the spirit, 
the illusion, uncertainty and errors of reason, the distraction, 
weakness, hesitation, failings, and taints of the will, he was all 
the same a real man who lived and was tempted. Temptation 
could have for him no evil attraction, but was only a suffering 
and a strife, for he escapes from evil which, far from being 
inherent in our nature, rather diminishes and mutilates, 
troubles and deforms it. On the other hand he gained deeper 
affinities with us, in bowing himself more completely than any 
other human being under the temptations which assail man 
from without. 

In proportion as the soul is raised and freed from interior 
evil, restrains its passions, and controls original selfishness by 
the love of God, pride by humility, ambition by disinterested- 

1 John xiv. 30. 

2 Bossuet, Attditations sur PEvangile. 


160 


JESUS CHRIST. 


ness, it finds inward strife give way by degrees to peace. But 
though it has grown in the image of Christ it has not gained 
repose any more than he. Then is the hour of violent assaults 
from without, and for Jesus, as for us, “the struggle is not 
with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this world,” with evil 
spirits 1 who assail men, inspiring and causing great attacks. 
All these assaults were to burst upon him with a vehemence 
which renders him without a peer in the heroic race of those 
who have striven, suffered, and agonized for God, who have 
resisted the world, subdued corruption, repulsed the Evil One 
and broken his empire in them and around them. 

One of the greatest troubles for a righteous and saintly man 
is the sight of evil and contact with the evil spirit, whatever 
form he assume; when our will remains firm his very pre¬ 
sence is still torture. Jesus consented to experience this, and 
before, in obedience to his Father, he drank deeply of all sor¬ 
rows and suffered from men persecution even unto death, we 
now see him yield his body over to the power of Satan, and 
consent to be the object of his suggestions. 

From the outset of his career he found himself face to face 
with the principle of evil; this external struggle was the open¬ 
ing of his life. Universal tradition among Christians calls it 
especially “the Temptation”; three evangelists have preserved 
the account for us, one has given a short summary, the other 
two a detailed account . 2 


1 Ephes. vi. 12. 

2 Matt. iv. 1-11; Mark i. 12-13; Luke iv. 1-13. The silence of the 
fourth Gospel cannot weaken the authority of the witness of the synoptics, 
nor destroy the historical character of their narrative ; the silence is suffi¬ 
ciently explained by the nature of the fact. The humanity of Jesus is 
there seen in his pain and humiliation, and therefore the temptation is not 
in accordance with the portrait of Jesus drawn by the evangelist. It is also 
to be noticed that St. John always omits what has been narrated by his 
predecessors when he has nothing to add to their account. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. l6l 

Jesus was fasting in the desert. For forty days and forty 
nights, like Moses and Elias, he neither ate nor drank, nor 
felt the pangs of hunger. All the needs of life were at rest. 
In a momentary freedom from this slavery, earth had no hold 
on him. None can tell to how great a degree of liberty, 
independence, and spiritual freedom, a soul absorbed by 
God may bring its own body. Time exists no longer for the 
spirit which God withdraws from all terrestrial things, from 
all which can change and perish, and steeps in his eternal 
light. However, after forty days and forty nights, Jesus 
became again subject to the law of mankind ; the Son of God 
gave place to the Son of man ; he felt the need of restoring his 
forces, and was an hungered. Then the Tempter drew near. 

He knew not who was this new prophet on whose head the 
Spirit had descended and whom the voice of heaven had greeted 
as the well-beloved of the Father, but he perhaps suspected the 
Messiah in this unknown, whose appearance did not reveal but 
rather hid his greatness. No creature can know, without faith 
or a direct revelation, the unspeakable tie which binds together 
in Jesus the human and divine natures. The spirit of evil, 
negation, and calumny, the spirit of violence and craft, corrup¬ 
tion and error, is antagonistic to all faith, and closed to every 
revelation ; if signs awake its suspicions they do not illuminate 
it; it remains the radical antagonist of all who desire truth and 
goodness, the salvation and regeneration of man, and is con¬ 
sequently the born enemy of him whom it considers destined 
to bring to mankind the power, the light, and the peace of God ; 
whose true name is Anti-Christ. 

He craftily seized the hour when Jesus felt human weakness, 
and as though to oblige him to reveal himself, said : “ If thou 
be the Son of God, command that these stones,” of which the 
desert was so full, “ be made bread.” It was a perfidious sug¬ 
gestion ; there was nothing more legitimate than the satisfac¬ 
tion of the primary need of every living creature, nor did it 
matter that the wilderness was uncultivated. If Jesus were 


JESUS CHRIST. 


162 

the Son of God, God had only to command, and the stones 
would be transformed at his voice, God would hear the desire 
of his prophet and the rock would change to bread. 

The Tempter, conscious of Messiah in Jesus, suggested to 
him to use his almighty power, to suspend the wise laws of 
creation for his own advantage and personal satisfaction ; he 
urged on him arbitrary and fantastic miracles. His words, 
perfectly honest in appearance, contained the whole spirit of evil, 
selfishness and sensuality, the desire to make God his servant, 
instead of himself the servant of God. False prophets follow 
this satanic counsel, subordinating to their own interests the 
divine power of which they boast ; instead of being faithful 
servants, they aspire in secret to give orders to God ; and the 
miracles which their historians attribute to them, always bear 
a magical character. 

Jesus, with one sovereign word, repulsed the Tempter. 
“ Man,” he said, “ doth not live by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” He would 
obtain his food whence his Father pleased ; if it were his will 
that he should endure hunger, he would subdue the needs of 
his lower life; the life-giving and creative word of God was 
able to replace bread and other food which was created to 
maintain life; if it pleased God to feed him with his word, 
bread and created food was useless. As the true son of God, 
Jesus did not anticipate his Father. In spite of the needs 
which pressed on him, he remained in submission to order and 
wisdom, and gave himself up to God, who was all-sufficient. 

It would seem that when man has mastered his appetites, 
and ceases to rely on fragile matter, when strengthened by the 
indomitable will which rules and guides all things, he would be 
sheltered from satanic suggestion. It is not so; evil can still 
intrude. The soul most submissive to God falls back on itself, 
and in its selfishness is capable of doubt and rashness, of failure 
or excessive confidence; which is the ordinary rock of false 



THE TEMPTATION. 

From the Painting by Ary Scheffer 













































































































JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 163 

prophets. They love vain show and seek to do marvellous 
acts ; they tempt God, making it as it were necessary to interfere 
for them, so that this intervention may prove to themselves 
that God upholds them. Here again we find that proud 
attempt to place God at the service of their empty thought 
and feeble will. Such selfishness, nakedly stated, is gross 
enough, but disguised as a feeling of unbounded trust, it seems 
a virtue, and puts on the airs of a close intimacy and familiarity 
with God; a snare from which even the holiest souls do not 
always escape. 

Such was the new assault of Satan against Jesus. He in¬ 
tended to use against him the superhuman power of spirits. 
Free from all bondage to matter, having power over weight 
and space, he carried Jesus to the summit of the Temple, the 
pinnacle of one of the porches, perhaps that above the courts, 
whence the valley of the Kedron is visible, or on the minaret, 
whence the priests announced the sunrise every morning, as 
soon as the sky grew light behind the mountains of Hebron. 

“If thou art the Son of God,” he said, “cast thyself down, for 
it is written, God has commanded his angels to bear thee in 
their hands that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.” This 
strange attempt might have ensnared the will of one distrust¬ 
ful or rash, for at the bottom of every soul there is a secret 
egoism, which, deceiving it about its own power, urges it for¬ 
ward to inconsiderate acts. But the confidence of Jesus in his 
Father was absolute, and he acted only under his impulse, nor 
would he undertake any act which implied a doubt in regard 
to God, or an excessive confidence in his own human energy. 
To this perverse imitation of Satan he answered, “ Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God.” 

Perhaps also the suggestion of Satan chimed in with the 
thoughts of Jesus, relative to his work as Messiah and the 
difficulties of its execution. Every nature, however well- 
balanced, recoils instinctively from difficulty, pain, and sacri¬ 
fice. In his life Jesus often showed the depression into which 


164 


JESUS CHRIST. 


he was thrown by the mere sight of the cup which he had to 
drink. His mission would be shortened, if, using his power, 
he revealed himself by a wonderful sign. With what joy the 
people would salute him as the Messiah, if they saw him 
fall from the Temple, into the midst of the startled crowd, as 
if he had descended from heaven, full of power and majesty ! 
Satan insinuated that the thing was easy, for God had ordered 
the angels to carry him in their hands. If thou art the 
Messiah, do not hesitate, make thy work easy, and dazzle the 
people by a sign. The answer of Jesus cut the root of the evil, 
and tore off the mask from the false interpretation of the great 
word of Scripture which shows so absolute a confidence in 
God. 

However rough may be the road on which he orders us to 
advance, we are sure to find his angels to bear us up and remove 
obstacles; but to count on his intervention for our aid in diffi¬ 
culties, into which our own rashness has urged us, is to tempt 
his Providence. Such an act is evil, for it is always inspired 
by a feeling of distrust in regard to God or of rash confidence 
in self. 

The temptation of Christ was unfolded like a drama. 
After the scenes of the wilderness and the Temple, came the 
mountain. Jesus once more gave himself up to the spiritual 
power of the Tempter, and was carried to a high mountain, 
whence the devil showed him, in the four corners of the horizon, 
the kingdoms and empires of the world, unveiling their earthly 
glory before his eyes. 

Every man endowed with any activity looks upon the 
human circumstances under which he is to act with ambition 
to establish his kingdom there. The desire of power is innate, 
and grows with genius; the stronger a man is, the more is he 
carried away by this imperious tendency. Within proper control 
such an aspiration is legitimate ; but when excessive and tyran¬ 
nical it is vicious. We should misunderstand the vocation of 
the Messiah if we did not recognise his strong and wise desire to 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 165 

conquer the entire world to his faith, and to subdue mankind 
to God ; he holds no material sword in his hand, but the sword 
of the Spirit; his is no empire like those of earth, the result of 
subjection, of violence and craft, but a heavenly kingdom 01 
freedom, gentleness, and right. When Satan unfolded before 
Jesus what he called his empire, he endeavoured to flatter and 
threaten him ; to flatter by unhealthy ambition, and threaten by 
showing the forces which Christ had against him, if they were 
not for him. He showed him the dream of the false Messiah- 
ship which possessed the Jewish imagination, and whose 
seduction very few spirits, even among the loftiest, the most 
cultured, active, and religious, could escape. Satan reigned 
over these by this dream, and by it he attempted to gain access 
to the soul of Jesus. 

“ See,” he said to him, I am the master, “ I give all this to 
whom I will,” but in order to possess such a power, it is neces¬ 
sary to have the spirit of evil, of deceit, violence and selfish¬ 
ness ; let us make an alliance; worship this spirit, and “ all 
shall be thine.” Jesus submitted neither to the attraction 
of ambition nor to the fear of the adversary, with one strong 
word he repulsed that sacrilegious counsel: “ Get thee behind 
me, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God, and him only shalt thou serve ” 

He had but one Master, he knelt before one only Lord, he 
knew no other alliance than union with his Father. The 
smallest compromise with the evil spirit is the negation of 
his Messianic work, whose supreme aim is to withdraw every 
free creature from bondage to evil, and to submit it, in 
righteousness, to the will of God. Beyond Jesus and those 
whom his Spirit guides and guards, all men have sacrificed to 
the false god of this world, the spirit of lying and cruelty, of 
selfishness and craft. The material conquest of this world is 
almost everywhere an homicidal work, marked by the sign of 
the Beast, that power of darkness which directs and tyrannises 
over it. Satan gives himself out here as God, and he makes 


166 JESUS CHRIST. 

those who adore him believe that, like him, they will become as 
gods. 

To become as God is the great dream which has haunted, 
and the mirage which has fascinated mankind, since the first 
man. We are a strange and miserable divinity, when we obey 
the spirit of evil, instead of answering him as Jesus did, “Thou 
shalt worship God alone.” Our proud “ I ” disappears, our 
wisdom is folly, our power craft and tyranny, our glory vanity ; 
and our kingdom is ephemeral and deceptive, for we soon fall 
under the terrible reaction of all that we in our violent selfishness 
have subjugated and brought into servitude for a moment. 
Such is the history of mankind under the sway of Satan ; it con¬ 
tinues to evolve itself through the ages, powerless to destroy the 
work of Jesus, who only gives to his faithful a share in his divine 
nature, if they give up all that is evil and adore God alone. 

Victorious over these three temptations, Jesus appeared in 
that moral beauty which was to envelop his short life and mis¬ 
sion as with an aureole. The resolution which he had opposed 
to the spirit of evil was not to be shaken ; what he put aside 
with an absolute will was put aside for ever; the three centres 
of desire which are never extinguished even in the best 
natures, were not to cast upon him even the smallest spark. 
The Son of God, he was never to submit, in his human nature, 
to material needs, and was never to employ his divine power 
to satisfy them ; he was to endure hunger, fatigue, pain, and 
death ; but never to ask his Father that he would lighten the 
weight of his destiny ; and was never to tempt him ; we shall 
never see in him any act of which the sole end was to exhibit 
his divine sonship to the eyes of the people. The people 
were to demand of him a sign from heaven, but he was to 
refuse it as an inspiration of Satan, giving them in one firm 
and mysterious sentence, the sign of his death and his future 
resurrection. Up to that time he was rather to accept the 
condition of all men, and if he freed himself from it, it would 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. l6j 

never be to give himself the satisfaction of feeling the arms 
of his Father round him, but to bring men to the iaith, to 
instruct, heal, and save them. He was never to risk his life 
by rashness, but to rule it by the laws of perfect wisdom ; 
humble and gentle, he was not to be uplifted by confidence, 
but rather escape from his enemies by flight, not deliver¬ 
ing himself up to them till the day when the will of his 
Father imposed it on him as a duty. He was to destroy 
unmercifully all earthly ambition, never listening to the pre¬ 
judices of his people, nor to the timidity of his disciples, nor 
to the counsels of human wisdom, to found his Kingdom and 
accomplish his work, and since his work was to establish the 
Reign of God, he was to adore God alone 

The whole nature and genius of evil may be learnt in this 
sorrowful page of the life of Jesus. Man can there learn the 
terrible force against which he must measure himself in order 
to fulfil his duty and his destiny here below. Evil is in him, 
inherent in his very nature, his faculties, and instincts, in the 
matter of which he is formed, in the hunger which sways him 
from his earliest breath, whose tyrannic appeals are made 
known to him by his passions ; it is in that ineradicable pride 
which separates him from God, invites him to vanity and 
ostentation, to all which can nourish his self-love; it is in that 
ambition for power and rule, for making himself the centre 
of a kingdom in which he will have absolute power, in that 
practical negation of God whose place he desires to usurp ? 
in that idolatry which has for its end the deification of him¬ 
self and his errors, his passions and vices. 

All these methods of the evil spirit are manifest. The 
assaults which Jesus was willing to undergo are renewed in 
the life of each man, and of all mankind. Man is at strife 
with Satan, whose suggestions embrace the whole earth, the 
desert in which we are given over to temptation. The same 
craft, the same false wisdom dazzles us by its magic, flatters 


168 


JESUS CHRIST. 


our lower nature, and seeks to bring it under subjection. The 
Evil One insinuates himself even into the most perfect, those 
who live trusting in the Providence of the Father ; in order to 
seduce them he usurps the words of God, and changes their 
meaning ; he seeks to subdue their courage, persuading them 
that as God can do all things, they may face every danger; 
he fascinates us by the dreams of ambition, he lifts us above 
ourselves, as he carried Christ to an high mountain, and 
promises us glory and power, but always on the sole condition 
that we obey and adore him. These three temptations 
embrace all our actions in our relations with matter, with God 
and our human surroundings. Jesus had consented to know 
and to conquer them all. Thereby he resembles us, especially 
in that he realises in its fulness our true human nature, and 
remains the eternal type of those who are tempted. “ For,” as 
said that apostle who best understood his Messianic character: 
“We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like 
as we are, yet without sin .” 1 

The spirit of evil had not taken possession of him, but had 
retired for ever ; the personal struggle was not to be renewed . 2 
No direct power was ever afterwards given to the devil 
over Jesus ; 3 he trembled before him, and cried out as he 
approached ; “ Son of David, wherefore hast thou come to 
torment us before the time ” 4 by tearing away from us the 
bodies and the souls of men ? 

Jesus, after these sad hours, was sensible of divine joys : 

“ The angels came,” says the Gospel, “ and ministered unto 
him ” ; the spirits of God were always at his command ; they 
withdrew in the moment of temptation, and at the will of 

1 Heb. iv. 15. 

2 Matt. iv. 11. 

8 Luke iv. 13 

4 Matt, viii 29. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 169 

their Master; but Satan once repulsed they reappeared. 
Intermediaries between man and God, these heavenly 
messengers bring us the power and joy of God as aether 
transmits the light and heat of the sun through space. 

Jesus lived accompanied by their invisible host, he saw 
them watching from on high over little children , 1 he knew 
that they were ready to serve him , 2 by them he wrought his 
deeds of mercy and power, by them he healed the sick, 
expelled demons, converted sinners, fed the multitude; and 
yet, even when he might have done so, he did not ask his 
Father to send their faithful legions to his succour ; 3 he lived 
in self-forgetfulness, without ever mitigating the burthen of 
our human nature of which he had taken on him all the 
sorrow. For him, as for us, life is composed of sorrows and 
joys, terrible trials and intoxicating triumphs. Joys are short, 
a brief truce in the midst of strife, but enough to keep our 
will exercised. Born of trials, they increase with trial. 
they are balm and oil; they heal the sores of the wounded 
soul, and are unction to the athlete to prepare his limbs for 
more strenuous combat. Those who have experienced the 
consolation, serenity, and holy emotions which God has 
infused into the soul of his martyred servants, will realize the 
full meaning of the words which close the account of the 
temptation of Jesus. 

This fact, so mysterious in its whole and in its details, has 
been profoundly misunderstood by all those modern historians 
whose criticism rests on the denial of the supernatural. The 
apparition of evil as a personal being, the magical power which 
he used, the wondrous translation of Jesus by the Tempter to the 
pinnacle of the Temple, and then to the top of a mountain, 
the coming of the angels to minister to him after the devil 

1 Matt, xviii. 10. 

2 Matt. xxvi. 53. 

3 Cf. Chrysost., Ho mil. in opere imp . super Matt . 


I/O 


JESUS CHRIST. 


had been vanquished, are too much for a Godless philosophy, 
and for materialistic science. 

Yet, a true criticism does not allow us to give any other 
explanation of the narrative of the Temptation than that given 
above. We falsify everything as we please, if once we deny 
the objective reality of its scenes, and discover in it only an 
inward vision created by the imagination of Jesus . 1 It is 
mere childish absurdity to suppose, with the older German 
rationalists, that the devil was only a crafty ambassador of the 
Sanhedrin, some skilful and powerful Pharisee, charged to 
turn Jesus aside from his mission, playing with him the part of 
Satan . 2 

Others have seen in it only a parable intended to teach man 
the art of overcoming temptation ; that Jesus told it to his 
disciples, who, misunderstanding him, turned it into history. 
But Jesus never made himself the subject of his parables, and 
if he did not bring himself on to the scene when he told the 
story, no one can explain how they substituted their Master 
for the fictitious person of the original story . 3 

The mythical school 4 has seen in it mere legend ; search¬ 
ing the Old Testament it has made reiterated attempts to show 
how the first Christians conceived and built up this account. It 
has recalled to mind the temptation of our first parents in Eden, 
that of Abraham, that of the people of Israel in the wilder¬ 
ness, in order to find a model for the temptation of Jesus. It 
has appealed to abstract ideas of the opposition between 
the Messiah and his adversary, an opposition which would 
necessarily create the image of a strife between the two and 
the defeat of the latter. Nor, in order to explain the scene of 
the struggle, has it forgotten to recall the fact that the desert 

1 St. Cyprian et Theod. de Mopsuestia. 

2 Paulus, ad. h. 1 . ; Herder, Christ . Schrift. B. 2. 

3 Baumgarten-Curcius, Bibl. Theol. , sec 40 ; Schleiermacher, Schrift . 
des Luk , p. 54. 

4 Strauss, Das Leben Jesu , t. i. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 1 7 1 

was held to be the home of demons. But it is manifestly 
impossible to construct by mythical processes, the drama of 
the three temptations, with its lofty moral ideas. 

The critical school in France has given itself less trouble; 
having been ready to recognise the historical character of the 
sojourn of Jesus in the wilderness and his rigorous fast; but 
the imagination of the disciples alone invented the trials which 
he endured in that terrible country; and they created the 
legend . 1 This is an arbitrary hypothesis supported by no 
document, and which therefore has no other value than that of 
an expedient for getting rid of facts which do not tally with the 
philosophy of the writer. History thus treated is only a shift¬ 
ing ground which fails beneath our feet; no facts remain of 
which it is composed, except those which have found grace 
with capricious judgments and personal systems. 

By what strange aberration could the apostles have allowed 
themselves to dream thus of their Master? It would have 
been repugnant to them, and almost sacrilegious, to admit that 
the Son of God was subject to the power of the Tempter. 
Reality alone could have affected them, and since such scenes 
have been believed, told, and written, they can only be 
explained by the admission that such scenes really took place. 
The sombre and sorrowful side of the life of Jesus was only 
with difficulty and by degrees understood by his disciples; 
who needed the education of the Spirit of God to enable 
them to understand a suffering Messiah ; now the temptation 
of the Messiah is one of the first and deepest manifestations 
of the mystery of his sorrow. 

The more recent representatives of the critical school in 
Germany 2 have also rejected the letter of this history, judging 
it unworthy of Christ, and the details unacceptable by 
enlightened reason. They have treated it as popular fiction, 

1 Renan, Vie de Jesus. 

2 Keim, Geschichte Jesus von Nazara, B. i, ad. h. 1 .; Schenkel, Das 
CharacterbiId, Jesu. p. 50. 

18 


172 


JESUS CHRIST. 


endeavouring to describe awkwardly, and under a gross form, 
the struggles which Jesus underwent, either at the beginning 
or in the course of his career. According to them, two 
questions must have agitated the soul of Jesus: the duty of 
playing the part of Messiah, and the choice of the necessary 
means. They have chosen to see in these two questions the 
subject of those inward conflicts through which Jesus 
laboriously arrived at the complete understanding and accom¬ 
plishment of his destiny. But the Gospel documents do not 
show the smallest trace of these human infirmities. The 
Christ whom they thus describe is not the Christ of history, 
but belongs rather to fantastic criticism; he may resemble 
man such as we know him in ourselves, weak in spirit, and 
weaker still in will, but he is not the type of man whom the 
Gospel has revealed and whom Jesus realised. 

The formal, detailed, and fundamentally concordant 
witness of St. Matthew and St. Luke does not allow us to 
deny the reality of a narrative whose origin can be ascribed to 
none but Jesus himself. It is difficult to say at what moment 
in his life he told his disciples what he had suffered, at the 
outset of his career, in that solitude which was itself his first 
temptation. We have no precise indication, but it was perhaps 
at that farewell Passover wherein so much sadness and love 
took possession of his soul, and opened it to his disciples in 
his last confidences. “ You call me Master and Lord,” he said 
to them, with other touching words, “and so I am.” And 
now, if I have never left the course set out for me, in spite of 
temptation and trial, neither must you leave it. “ I have given 
you an example .” 1 And at that same hour when, thinking on 
the terrible trials which were to burst on his disciples, he 
reassured them, saying, “ Be of good cheer ; I have overcome 
the world .” 2 This was surely an allusion to his sojourn in the 
desert, where he had indeed overcome the prince of this world, 

1 John xiii. 13. 

2 J ohn xvi. 33. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 173 

he who puts in motion all the bitter hatreds constantly 
directed against the work and the disciples of Jesus. 

The baptism and temptation succeeded each other in fact 
as in the narrative of the evangelists. These two inseparable 
events which explain each other by contrasts and comparison 
are the true introduction to the life of Christ. The first was 
the manifestation of the Spirit of God, the other that of the 
spirit of evil; the first shows us the divine sonship of Jesus, 
the other, his human nature, dedicated to strife and trial ; one 
reveals to us the infinite force with which he was to act, the 
other, the obstacles which he must overcome ; the one teaches 
us his inner life, the other, the law of his action. 

These two spirits are at work in each man and in all 
mankind, and by their incessant strife cause the great tumult 
of history. Jesus possessed the former in all its fulness, and 
was the absolute enemy of the other. His constant aim is to 
secure in man the triumph of the spirit of good, and the defeat 
of the spirit of evil. Whoever will obey the former must 
receive it from Christ, and whoever will conquer the second 
must ask power from him. Such is the greatness of Jesus, 
according to the witnesses of his life, those who have sketched 
it, at the outset of its career, in these two sacred scenes. 

Jesus is without equal among the sons of men; for no 
other is the “ Son of God,” and no other escapes the attempts 
of evil. He is our type and our strength ; we must strive to 
be like him, and can only conquer by him. His divine son- 
ship and his absolute sanctity thus shine forth at the outset of 
his career, lighting up the whole mystery of his work, deep 
as the designs of God, vast as humanity, austere and heroic as 
the sacrifice it demanded from its author. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE PUBLIC LIFE. 

TlIE beginning of the public life of Jesus embraces a period 
of fourteen to fifteen months, from the day when he left the 
wilderness, a little before the Passover of the year 28, to 
the imprisonment of John the Baptist, 1 about the feast of Purim 
in the year 29. The three first Gospels make this last event, 
which finished the mission of the Forerunner, the starting- 
point of the apostolate of Jesus, and of their own narrative. 2 
They are silent about the earlier phase which their history 
presupposes, it would be totally unknown to us if the author 
of the fourth Gospel had not, in completing the accounts of 
his predecessors, told us certain striking facts which marked 
its character. According to his plan, he shortly indicates the 
various journeys of Jesus, fixes the hours and days, recalls at 
length intimate conversations which seem to have been held 
with him alone, since he alone has recorded them. In these 
pages the narrative is evidently personal; the soul of Jesus 
breathes through the authors, he always effaces himself, 
not even naming himself, and we hear, not himself, but his 
Master. 

John the Baptist, by his energy and his roughness, reminds 

1 See Appendix A, General Chronology of the Life of Jesus . II. In¬ 
auguration of his Public Ministry in Galilee. 

2 Matt. iv. 12 • Mark i. 14 j Luke iv. 14. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 175 

us of that violent wind which, in Elijah’s vision on Horeb 
went before the passage of Jehovah, tearing the mountains 
and breaking the rocks. Jesus was the still small voice, the 
very breath of God. His first manifestations were full of 
calmness and peace, gentleness and reserve; with one single 
exception, there is nothing either vehement or remarkable in 
his action. 

After his fast and temptation in the wilderness he returned 
alone to the banks of the Jordan, in the neighbourhood of 
Bethabara, where John, since he had baptized him, bore 
witness to him without ceasing. His meeting with Jesus, the 
view of the opened heavens, the voice of the Father, and the 
visible descent of the Spirit on Messiah, had given greatness to 
the prophet; who was no longer only the austere preacher of 
repentance, the stern ambassador of the justice of God, the 
zealous Baptist, but the first evangelist of the new time. That 
which the prophets, his ancestors, had perceived from afar, he 
saw and touched, and published ; the light of God revealed 
to him its mystery, and he ceased not to proclaim it to the 
multitude. 

This progressive evolution of the religious action of John 
has either been rendered unnatural, thrown into the shade, or 
suppressed, by those modern historians who reject the precious 
documents of the fourth Gospel. This great figure, under 
their pen, has lost his most original features: the perfect 
mixture of power and sweetness, severity and unction, holy 
anger against evil and sympathetic tenderness, indomitable 
righteousness and self-denial. It is not the fact, as certain 
writers have dared to say, 1 that Jesus was under the influence 
of John and his ministry, to the detriment of his own character, 
but rather it was John who underwent the influence of Jesus. 
The sight of the Saviour drew from him profound cries of 
anguish and sorrow. 


1 Renan, Vie de JesuSj p. 119. 


;6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


One day John saw Jesus coming towards him from out 
of the shifting crowd. It was after the fast in the wilderness 
and the temptation. Jesus perhaps appeared overwhelmed by 
the sadness of his heroic mission. The prophet, who thought 
only of him as he pointed him out to those standing by, cried, 
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of 
the world.” 1 Such was the first name given to Jesus on his 
entry into public life; no other expressed so well the outward 
form and the inward character of him who, dedicated by God 
to sacrifice, had said to John, “It becometh us to fulfil all 
righteousness.” 

The vocation of a man forms his soul, is engraved upon 
his features and his mien, and profoundly impressed upon his 
whole being : that of Jesus, sorrowful and holy above all 
others, enveloped him with humility and tenderness, and made 
of him the gentlest among the sons of men. He was truly 
the Lamb of God. 

In calling the Messiah of Israel by this sad and mysterious 
name, John showed himself superior to the current notions of 
his time. The second Isaiah spoke like the first; the prophet 
of penitence recalled the prophet who, six hundred years 
before, had been the evangelist of the suffering Messiah : 
“ He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see 
him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is 
despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and 
acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from 
him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. All we 
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to 
his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of 
us all. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as 
a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his 
mouth.” 5 

1 John i. 29. 

* Isaiah liii. 2-7. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 177 

The great conscience of John, who had so vigorously 
denounced the corruption of the world, and preached 
repentance in such urgent tones, now understood where true 
righteousness abode; and the same man who, in the light of 
God, had seen the terrible truths of judgment, now saw, in yet 
brighter light, the innocent victim who was to atone for and 
purify mankind. 

He stripped the veil from the Pharisees, who had so long 
deceived themselves about the practices of their law and their 
empty righteousness. He seemed to say to them, “Not the 
blood of your lambs, sacrificed twice each day in the Temple 
on the altar of sacrifice, can purify the people ; the true Lamb 
is here.” And taking up again his favourite theme, he 
constantly repeated his declarations concerning Jesus, like a 
man absorbed by one thought, one irresistible conviction. 
He said to the multitude, pointing out Jesus to them, “ Upon 
whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on 
him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. 
And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God ” 1 

These constant and eager declarations unveiled the soul 
of the Forerunner, and proved the resistance which his words 
encountered in the hardened hearts of the people. Whatever 
was the ascendency gained by John the Baptist, it does not 
seem that his doctrine of the Messiah had reached the con¬ 
science of the Jewish people, nor uprooted their Messianic 
prejudices, but it must at least have touched some simple 
souls, and it finally drew, little by little, the attention of all 
to the Elect of God, whom no visible sign pointed out for 
the admiration of the crowd. 

The scene of the baptism and those great things concerning 
Jesus which the prophet said, only served to render the 
mystery of the Kingdom more impenetrable. It was not clear 
how this humble workman of Galilee, this Nazarene, could be 


John i. 33-34. 


i;8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the Messiah, the hope and salvation of Israel. Jesus had not 
declared himself; the crowd passed by him, marvelling or 
distracted, curious and ignorant; they gazed, but perhaps 
failed to understand. 

Meantime Jesus had not left the banks of the Jordan. On 
another day he was walking by the river at sunset, when the 
multitude had dispersed, and John was there with two of his 
disciples. Looking at the Saviour as he walked, the same 
impression that had seized him the evening before again came 
upon him, and drew from him the same cry, “ Behold the 
Lamb of God.” 

The word of John was heard by the two disciples ; the tones 
of their master moved them, the sight of Jesus drew them, they 
left their master and followed Jesus. “Then Jesus turned,and 
saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? 
They said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted, 
Master, where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come 
and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode 
with him that day; for it was about the tenth hour.” 1 

He who sketched this picture with so delicate a touch, 
such sobriety, and wonderful freshness of colouring, was one 
of those disciples who went to the home of Jesus; that 
date he never forgot; he remembered the hour of that 
meeting, in the evening when the light grew pale, when silence 
and calm favoured intimate conversation. He did not name 
himself, but we guess from his very reserve that he was John, 
the beloved disciple, the first who was chosen by Jesus. He 
too was of Galilee, the son of a fisherman, and himself a 
fisherman. What he heard from the lips of his Master during 
that night and day, has remained a mystery. No doubt they 
spoke of the Kingdom of God, of the hope of Israel, of the 
salvation of the people, and of him who, bringing salvation, 


John i. 36 and following. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 179 


should answer to that hope and found that kingdom. But, 
after all, what matters the words that were spoken; presence 
alone often says more than long discourses: a master mind, 
living, intelligent, and loving, is able, even in silence, to 
exercise influence on and to take captive those who are near. 

One word clearly shows us that Jesus exercised a profound 
charm upon his two guests ; his word enlightened them ; they 
believed in his person and in his mission. In fact the next 
morning, one of them, Andrew, also a Galilaean and a fisher¬ 
man on the lake of Tiberias, went to seek his brother. His 
enthusiasm passed all bounds, and he needed someone to 
share it. As soon as he met Simon, his brother, he said: 
“ We have found the Messias ; ” and he brought him to Jesus. 1 
Jesus looked at him keenly and said: “Thou art Simon, the 
son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by inter¬ 
pretation, A stone.” In giving to the new-comer this name 
which foretold so much, he designed to appropriate him at 
once, and marked him with a sign; he allowed the son of 
Jonas to see how deeply he read his mind, but without yet 
revealing to him the destiny covered by this mysterious name. 
It was enough for Peter to feel himself bound to him who 
began to show himself to them as the Christ. 2 

1 John i. 40 and following. 

2 The German critics who constantly set the synoptics against the fourth 
Gospel, sacrificing either the synoptics to St. John or St. John to the 
synoptics, according as they choose, have committed, as we think, a great 
mistake. They have confused the account of the vocation of the disciples 
as it is related in Matthew iv. 18-22, Mark i. 16, &c., and Luke v. 2-11, 
with the account of St. John, and they have chosen to see in it the same 
fact differently related ; only it has been easy to them to mark out 
different positions, and, indeed, contradictions. 

An impartial study of the two texts does not permit us to believe that 
they are regarding the same fact. The calling of the first disciple, as told 
by St. John, is absolutely distinguished, both by time and place, and 
indeed by details, from the second calling told by the synoptics. The 
two facts complete and explain, but do not destroy each other. Neither 
must be sacrificed to the other, though they must be compared. Here, as 
in many other circumstances, St. John completes the synoptics. 


i8o 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The power of God, obedient to the laws which it has laid 
down, which orders the movement of the whole creation, is 
never hurried and never violent; all is silent and secret in the 
first manifestations of a world in course of formation, and of 
a being about to be born ; we are allowed to see the first 
movements of the living spirit of Jesus. To live, for him as 
for every being, is to draw to himself and assimilate other 
beings; we see him exercising a powerful attraction over a 
few chosen and predestined souls; they silently joined them¬ 
selves to him one after another; the grain of mustard-seed 
does not grow more tranquilly. 

At the bottom of the Jordan valley, hollowed like an 
immense furrow, under the burning sky, at the very place 
where the word of John the Baptist leavened the conscience 
of Israel, we catch the first radiance, and see the first develop¬ 
ment of the Messianic power of Jesus. He had now three 
disciples. On the afternoon of the day on which he had 
called Peter to him, he looked towards Galilee, which he had 
not seen since his baptism, and desired to return there. He 
was on the way, when he met another Galilaean, Philip, a 
countryman of Andrew and Peter, inhabiting, like them, the 
little village of Bethsaida, on the shores of the lake. Jesus 
drew him by the simple word, “ Follow me.” 1 The call of 
Jesus has something at once gentle and irresistible ; it touches 
and attracts the heart; Philip shared the dawning faith and 
enthusiasm of his companions, and meeting a certain 
Nathanael, 2 the son of Tolomeus, he said to him : “We have 
found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did 

1 John i. 43, etc. 

2 Universal tradition has always identified Nathanael and Bartholomew. 
Nathanael was his proper name, Bartholomew (Bar-Tolmai) the name of 
his family. In the catalogue of the twelve apostles, St. Matthew x. 2-3, 
Philip and Bartholomew are always joined together. Interpreters have 
been almost unanimous in recognising the Nathanael of St. John in the 
Bartholomew of St. Matthew and the synoptics. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. l8l 

write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” The name of 
Nazareth gave offence to Nathanael, as he asked with rough 
frankness : “ Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? ” 

Galilee, because there was a mixture of Gentiles with the 
Jewish population, was despised by ardent Pharisees. “ Out of 
Galilee ariseth no prophet,” 1 they said ; the word had passed 
into a proverb, and Nazareth, an obscure town, unknown in 
the Scripture, was the particular object of this pious contempt 
of the orthodox. Philip, in the first ardour of his faith, and 
yet under the charm of Jesus’ words, did not try to refute 
Nathanael ; deeds have more effect than words ; it was enough 
to say, “ Come and see.” 

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, 
Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael 
saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered 
and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou 
wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” 

The narrative gives us clearly to understand that Jesus’ 
powers of knowledge were not tied to the normal conditions of 
presence and external sign. Jesus had seen Nathanael from 
afar and divined his most intimate thoughts. He was reading, 
or perhaps praying, seated under the fig-tree, according to 
Jewish custom. The Prophet allowed him to see, although the 
narrative says nothing of it, that he had read his conscience. 
From that moment he did not argue; as great in his faith as 
he had been sincere in his objection, he cried, “ Rabbi, thou 
art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” 2 Jesus 
was touched by this straightforward answer. “Because 
I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou ? 
thou shalt see greater things than these.” Then, turning to 
Nathanael, but addressing all, and using a formula which he 
employed when he would instruct his disciples on the things 
of God : “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall 

see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and 

1 John vii. 52. 

2 John 1. 49. 


182 


JESUS CHRIST. 


descending upon the Son of man.” 1 Mysterious words, full 
of infinite hope. Jesus knew that no man could grow great 
without hope, and he allowed this hope to shine before the 
eyes of his new disciples. 

They were neither to be astonished nor alarmed at the 
weakness of the Son of Man, the carpenter of Nazareth, the 
t rue Patriarch; for heaven, though closed elsewhere, had 
been opened above his head; the angels had brought him 
the power and the light of God. The communication was 
constant and complete; all his humanity tended towards 
God, and divinity was poured upon him. This obscure 
formula, these hidden expressions, translating to the disciples 
the unspeakable relation between their Master and the divine 
world, promised them that they should be the witnesses ot 
a life of which no human word, even if inspired, will ever 
succeed in sounding the depths. 

The faith of these first novices in the Messiahship of 
Jesus was, in spite of its sincerity and enthusiasm, very far 
from perfection. These children of the people were not yet 
freed from the prejudices of their time and their nation; in 
uniting themselves to Jesus by a movement of sympathy and 
joyous confidence, they chose, no doubt, to see in him the 
Messiah of their dreams. Man’s ideal is far from the inten¬ 
tions of God, but illusions disperse in proportion as the soul 
grows. These simple Galilaeans were one day to learn in the 
school of their Master, better than all the sages and doctors 
of Israel, the mystery of Christ, the nature of his Kingdom, 
the necessity of his sorrows, the secret of his lowliness, the 
eternity of his triumph. But for the time they were full of 
joy at having found the Messiah, as they said ; and we cannot 
but admire the youth and joyous courage of those uncalcu¬ 
lating spirits, who did not resist his attraction, and had the 
glory of calling themselves his first conquest. 


John i. 51. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 183 


Since Jesus had quitted Nazareth to receive the baptism 
of John some serious events had taken place. God himself 
had manifested himself in him, and consecrated his Elect 
before the face of all people. The new prophet, whose 
influence all felt, to whose action all submitted, had publicly 
pointed him out as Messiah and the Son of God. Although 
he seemed, in retiring to the desert, to flee from the sight and 
throngs of men, it was not possible but that his name should 
have filled Palestine, and passed from mouth to mouth in 
that Jewish society which was thrilled at the very idea of 
the advent of Messiah. 

When Jesus returned to Galilee, followed by a few unknown 
disciples, his reputation had preceded him ; but the little town 
of Nazareth did not welcome the popular reports, which were 
loud in the praise of the carpenter’s son, as he was called 
Even later, when Jesus had justified his mission by signs and 
wonders, his obscure origin, his station as an artisan, and his 
unlettered condition, remained a scandal to the Nazarenes. 
Envy, jealousy, all the mean passions and little prejudices of 
the village, were to blind them to the end ; for all that narrows 
the heart closes the mind. 

But if Jesus was misunderstood in the spot where his 
infancy and youth had passed, he must have been received 
with great emotion by his mother, when she saw him whom 
she had borne and nursed, at the very time when he was now 
at last about to realise all her mother’s hopes, which had been 
so long buried in her heart No one better than she under¬ 
stood their mystery; indeed, her only occupation was to 
follow her son, with those women who were to minister to 
him and accompany him in his journeys; but in spite of the 
shadow into which she was to withdraw, his words, acts, and 
intentions, in fact the whole life of Jesus, his sorrows and his 
triumphs, were to find in no other creature a more ardent 
acceptance, a more faithful echo. 


184 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The Gospel gives us some information of the road by 
which Jesus and his first disciples went up from the valley of 
Jordan to Galilee, whether he went to Nazareth by way of 
Scythopolis, or direct to Cana. The distance between Betha- 
bara and Cana is more than twenty-five leagues ; the journey 
of Jesus must have been rapid, for the third day after the call 
of Philip , 1 we find him in the little town of Cana, where his 
mother had preceded him. She was there, in the house of 
relatives or of friends; perhaps, after the departure of her 
son for his baptism, she had left Nazareth and sought 
their hospitality. We may suppose from the silence about 
Joseph, her husband, that she had become a widow, and, 
since her loss, had lived alone with Jesus. On Joseph’s side 
she had many kinsfolk; and it is very likely that, in her 
solitude, she had been received by some of her relatives. 

The name of the little town is carefully pointed out by 
the fourth Gospel, which calls it Cana in Galilee to distinguish 
it from another Kana in the neighbourhood of Tyre. Euse¬ 
bius has confounded the two . 2 It is situated two hours’ 
journey from Nazareth , 3 on the road to Tiberias, not far from 
the highway between Ptolemais and the cities on the lake of 

1 John ii. 1. 

2 Eusebius, Onomasticon , Kana. 

3 Some doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of Kefr-Cana as the 
place of the ancient town where Jesus changed the water into wine, and it 
has been attempted to find the true Cana in Kana-el-Djelil, situated nine 
miles to the north of Nazareth, and five and a half miles from Sephoris. 
That is the opinion of Robinson, “The Biblical Researches in Palestine,” 
vol. ii., page 347. An attentive examination of the witness borne by almost 
all early pilgrims, from the sixth to the fourteenth century, from Anthony 
of Plaisance to the Dominican Ricold, does not allow us to agree to this; 
moreover, there is nothing in the formless ruins of Kana-el-Djelil to 
bear any trace to the fact in the Gospels. Excavations at Kefr-Cana have 
brought to light the foundations of the church at the time of Constantine, 
as is proved by coins discovered there ; and all the Christians of Palestine, 
both schismatics and Catholics, venerated this church as being that 
which St. Helena constructed at the place in memory of the miracle of 
Cana. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 185 

Gennesareth. It was not without some importance, if we may 
judge by the extent of the ruins which cover the hill on the 
slope of which it is built. It is now only a miserable village, 
a heap of poor cottages; but Jesus has immortalised it by 
staying there. The remembrance of him has survived its 
overthrow; there, as elsewhere, a poor church, reared on the 
ruins of St. Helena’s basilica, witnesses, after nineteen centuries 
to the unfailing vitality of the words and deeds of Jesus. 

On the very evening that the Master arrived there a 
marriage was celebrated in one of the houses at Cana ; and, 
according to the Jewish custom, even among the lower classes, 
such feasts lasted for several days. Jesus was invited with 
his disciples ; the house was full of guests; for Eastern 
hospitality knows no bounds. It is not, however, the custom 
that women should take their place at table; they remain 
apart from the men, preparing the food, and overlooking 
the service, but they come and go in the guest-chamber. 
One circumstance gave some trouble at the end of dinner. 
They had no more wine, which, as says Bossuet, is called 
“ the soul of banquets.” Perhaps Mary had supplied the 
wine herself, for it was the custom among the Jews, when 
invited to a nuptial feast, to bring food as presents, wine and 
oil and fruits. The guests were numerous, the provisions 
gave out. Mary saw the embarrassment of the newly-married 
pair, and, in her anxious eagerness, thought at once of hei 
son. She came to him and said, “ They have no wine.” 

The answer of Jesus leads us to believe that other feel¬ 
ings were in her heart, that she thought of the glorious 
words which had been said of her Son, that she wished him 
to seize this occasion to manifest his power, that she let him 
see by her looks and gestures all that was in her mind. He, 
always master of himself, and calm with the calmness which 
nothing earthly disturbed, gently put aside his mother, 
moderated her eagerness and her charity, and with the gravity 
of one who, in his divine mission, never obeyed any earthly 


JESUS CHRIST. 


186 

motive or sentiment, but his Father alone, he said : “Woman, 
what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet come .” 1 
These words recall those of his twelfth year, when he said to 
his mother, sorrowful at having lost him and reproaching him 
for having left her, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father’s business ? ” 2 

A mother’s heart is seldom at fault, and in spite of the 
affectionate reproof of her son, Mary did not lose confidence, 
she understood that her wish was fulfilled, and in calm reliance 
on the bounty of him who could refuse her nothing, and sure 
of him as she was of herself, she said to the servants, “ Do 
whatever he shall command you.” 

“ And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the 
manner of the purifyingof the Jews, containing two or three 
firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with 
water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith 
unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the 
feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast 3 had 
tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it 
was : but the servants which drew the water knew; the 
governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto 
him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; 
and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but 
thou hast kept the good wine until now.” 


1 The Hebraism mah-li valeka corresponds to the Greek rt l\io\ koi not , 
and is often used in the Old Testament to express surprise mingled with 
displeasure. Saint Chrysostom (Homil. 20 In Joann.) renders it by 
“ Quid me molest as ? ” 

2 Luke ii. 49. 

8 The duties of the apxtTpUXivog at banquets consisted in superin¬ 
tending the ordering of the feast, and giving directions to the servants ; 
he was an invited guest, a friend of the bridegroom. At marriage-feasts, 
he had to receive the guests, and to say grace before and after 
the meal, blessing the different meats. This is why it was to that 
officer that Jesus ordered the water to be taken after it was turned into 
wine. This also accounts for the tone of equality and familiarity in which 
he addresses the bridegroom. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 187 

The disciples of Jesus were struck with this miracle; it 
was the first time that their Master had revealed to them his 
power ; they thought of those mysterious words which he had 
said to them a few days before, in allusion to the miracles with 
which his life was filled, and they felt their faith in him increase. 

I have kept in this narration the simplicity, liveliness, and 
richness of detail which the faithful pen of St. John has given 
to it; there was nothing more ordinary in appearance than 
this wedding feast in a little Galilaean town, but the presence 
of Jesus has transfigured it, and it has remained in Christian 
memory, as a symbol, which allows the faithful to see in it 
ineffable mysteries. Jesus increased and immortalised all that 
he touched, his least acts were a living word which the ages 
were to keep and echo. 

The Kingdom of God which he was to found is a wedding 
feast between God and mankind ; Christ is the eternal spouse 
who calls every human soul to his divine betrothal; the water 
changed into wine is the image of that transformation of our 
nature by the virtue and the intoxicating power of the Spirit; 
the woman, the mother who cried, “ They have no wine,” 
and appealed with confidence to Jesus, is the voice of 
all those who have felt the insufficiency of life, the weakness 
of mankind and of the whole creation, of those who have cried 
to God, and whose prayer God always heard at the chosen 
hour, but often too slowly for their own desire. 

This miracle was done in secret. The master of the feast 
was not even aware of it. Jesus, in the early period of his 
public life, avoided all publicity, kept aloof from the crowd, 
and remained hidden in the intimate circle of his own people, 
his mother and his near friends. He had his disciples above 
all before his eyes. It was for them, the first who were 
admitted into his familiarity, that he acted; to them he 
revealed himself; nothing shows better how fully he was in 
possession of his divine power than the gentleness and the 

19 


188 


JESUS CHRIST. 


infinite calm with which he carried out, without hasting and 
without resting, the will of his Father. In the peaceful begin¬ 
ning of his ministry, tranquil as the dawn of an Eastern day, 
there is no foreshadowing of the storm in which it closed. 

Jesus remained but a short time at Cana, nor did he return 
to Nazareth, but went down to Capernaum, accompanied by 
his mother, his brethren, and his disciples. We must not 
confuse this journey with that which he was to make later, 
when he fixed his dwelling there. 1 The distance from Cana to 
Capernaum is a day’s journey; the road winds in and out 
among the hills, always descending, and it finally lies between 
two rocky masses whose scarped sides, like gigantic walls full 
of innumerable caverns, form the Wady-el-Hamam. These 
inaccessible caves, now inhabited by clouds of pigeons, 
served, in the time of Herod, as a refuge for brigands. 2 This 
savage gorge opens on the lake and the rich verdant plain of 
Gennesareth. The little caravan traversed the villages of 
Magdala, of Bethsaida, and, towards the evening, arrived at 
Capernaum. Jesus found himself in the country of his dis¬ 
ciples; the families of John, of Andrew and Simon, and of 
Philip, lived at Bethsaida ; but Simon, a married man, had a 
house at Capernaum, which seems to have been the birthplace 
of his mother-in-law. We have no details of this first sojourn 
of Jesus ; its only aim was to strengthen the ties between the 
Master and his young disciples, and to prepare his future 
establishment; there was no rumour about him in the town 
on the occasion of his coming. 

Jesus had another thought: he looked towards Jerusalem 
and the Temple ; there, in the centre of the nation, in the chief 
city, before the people and the hierarchy, he was to show 
himself with power. A prophet, speaking of the Messianic 
times, had said: “ Behold, I will send my messenger, and 

1 See Book III., chapter ii. 

2 Antiq . xii. 11. I. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 189 

he shall prepare the way before me : and the Lord, whom ye 
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger 
of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, 
saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his 
coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? for he 
is like a refiner’s fire.” 1 John the Forerunner had opened the 
way: Christ the Lord could appear. A suitable occasion 
offered itself, the Passover of the year 28 was at hand, and 
pilgrims were forming themselves into caravans in every part 
of Galilee. Jesus took the road to Jerusalem which follows 
the valley of the Jordan, 2 and set out with his disciples. 


1 Malachi iii. 1. 

2 There were three principal roads leading from Galilee to Jerusalem. 
The first, or westernmost of these, joined the highway from Ptolemais to 
Gaza, crossed the plain of Sharon, and, leaving it at Lydda, turned up into 
the hill-country of Judah, thus avoiding Samaria entirely. The second, 
and most direct, passed straight along the plain of Jezreel, plunged into 
the Samaritan country, and reached the metropolis by way of Bethel, 
Ramah, and Gibeah, now Tel-el-Ful. The third followed the shore of the 
lake of Gennesareth, and, entering the valley of the Jordan, ran through 
Scythopolis and Archelais, past the spur of mount Sartabah and down to 
Phasaelis and Jericho ; then turned upwards across the desert and led 
through Bethany and Bethphage to the Mount of Olives. This was the 
route taken by the caravans which started from the western shore of 
the lake, and must have been that which Jesus followed upon leaving 
Capernaum. 


CHAPTER V. 

JESUS AT JERUSALEM AT THE PASSOVER OF THE YEAR 78 1 . 

HIS FIRST APOSTLESHIP IN JUDAEA. 

The journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem requires five 
or six stages; but we know nothing of the incidents which 
marked it, of the different halts made by Jesus, his conversa¬ 
tions, his thoughts, or his prayers. He did not travel unper¬ 
ceived as when, in former days, he joined the Galilaean cara¬ 
vans on their way to celebrate the Passover. His renown was 
spreading far and near; as men saw him, followed by his 
disciples, they said, “This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth." 1 
The attention of the crowd was attracted as he passed by. Of 
all kinds of curiosity, that which is concerned with religious 
sentiment is the most lively in the East; thus, even before his 
revelation was complete, Jesus, announced to the people by 
the voice of John, went on his way as though surrounded by 
an aureole. 

Pilgrims resorted to Jerusalem for the Passover in such 
numbers that the greater part had to lodge outside the walls 
in the suburbs, in the adjoining hamlets and villas, and even in 
tents, which were erected in great numbers to receive guests 
both countrymen and foreigners. The Galilaeans established 
themselves on the Mount of Olives, towards Bethphage and 
Bethany, where it is supposed that they had a khan for 
themselves. Every morning they came to the Temple, passed 


Matt. xxi. 11. 













































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 191 

the day in the town, and at evening returned to their cara¬ 
vanserai or to the neighbouring villages. It is probable that, 
according to his custom, as we shall see by the detailed 
accounts which the four evangelists have preserved about his 
last Passover, Jesus stayed with his friend Lazarus at Bethany, 
and from his house entered the town. 

As the traveller arrives at the highest point of the 
road over the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem appears in view 
against the western sky, on the other side of the valley of 
the Kedron, covering five hills with its domes and terraces, its 
palaces and towers, the whole enclosed by a high wall. On 
the background Ophel and Sion, Acra and Bethzeta make 
an amphitheatre round Moriah, which is level at the top and 
crowned by the huge edifice of the Temple . 1 

The mass of sacred buildings made a regular square of five 
hundred paces on each side, surrounded by walls like ramparts 
Eight monumental gates, surmounted with fortified towers, 
gave access to them. In the north-west angle of the square, a 
mass square in form, of white marble, covered with plates of 
gold, stood out from the midst of the terraces and colonnades 
a hundred ells high. This was the Holy Place, dazzling as a 
flame and sometimes sparkling like snow. This huge mass of 
buildings, seen from afar, was superb ; it had the terrible aspect 
of a fortress combined with the sumptuous air of a palace. 
The whole soul, the religious and national genius of Israel, 
was there: nothing was holier to an Israelite than the walls 
and the soil chosen by God himself that he might dwell with 
his people ; the very sight of them transported him ; nor was 
he content to die until he had prayed and sacrificed there. 
Even at the present day, when nothing remains but ruins, the 
Israelites may be seen, after two thousand years, flocking 
thither from the four quarters of the globe, to touch and kiss 
the walls, to wail before them, to bathe them with their tears, 


1 See Plan of the Temple. 


192 


JESUS CHRIST. 


and, by contact with them, kindle again the inextinguishable 
ardour of their hopes. 

In passing the threshold of one of these gates, the traveller 
entered into the Porch and vast Court of the Gentiles. Two 
porticoes extended along the walls which enclosed the Temple 
on the east and south: the first, towards the east, was called 
Solomon’s Porch ; the other, on the south, the Royal Porch. 
That of Solomon had three ranges of columns in white marble, 
twenty-five ells high, which rested on a pavement of many 
coloured stones, and upheld a roof of carved cedar. The 
porch was open to all, Gentiles as well as Jews, to the excom¬ 
municate and heretics as to the orthodox, to the impure as to 
the pure. 

A richly-worked balustrade of stone and, behind at a 
distance of ten ells, a great wall, separated the Court of the 
Gentiles from that reserved for the Jews. The balustrade 
was pierced with thirteen gates, before which were placed 
thirteen pillars, with inscriptions, prohibiting further passage 
on pain of death, to all whom their religion or some legal 
impurity rendered unworthy to enter. The wall behind the 
balustrade was twenty-five ells high, and pierced by nine 
doors : four to the north, four to the south, and one to the 
east, called the Beautiful, or Corinthian, gate. Each had a 
flight of fourteen steps, which must be ascended to enter 
into the Porch of the Women. A simple portico with several 
ranks of columns stood around ; between the columns, at regu¬ 
lar distances, were placed thirteen boxes to receive the offerings 
of pious Israelites . 1 

1 These are called in the Talmud Schouperot , in Greek Ta^o(pv\aKia. 
The expression in the Talmud is literally rendeied “ trumpets,’‘ and the 
reason of their being so called must evidently be that they were made in 
this form. Each of them bore an inscription stating its object. The first 
was set apart for the shekels of the year, the second for those of former 
years, the third for offerings of doves or pigeons, the fourth for the burnt 
offering, the fifth for wood for the sacrifice, the sixth for incense, the 
seventh for gold. The remaining six were reserved for voluntary sacrifices. 
Cf. Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae et Talmud., in 4 Evang., Leipzig, 1684. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 193 

In front of the Porch of the Women, separated from it 
by a balustrade, was the Court of Israel, reserved for men, 
only fifteen feet in depth ; a doorway of monumental bronze, 
called the Porch of Nicanor, crowned by a strong tower, 
gave entrance to it. The access to this was by a flight 
of fifteen steps, on which, on certain days, the priests 
chanted the famous Psalms of Degrees to an instrumental 
accompaniment. 

Beyond the Court of Israel, and separated by another 
balustrade, was the Court of the Priests. The great altar of 
burnt offering stood in its midst; there was the brazen laver, 
and there the marble tables which were used for the immolation 
of the victims. 

Behind the altar rose the Holy Place, the dwelling-place 
of Jehovah. Folding doors inlaid with gold, and surmounted 
by a colossal vine in gold, formed the entrance. The interior 
was composed of two large square cells, divided from each 
other by a broad Babylonian curtain, on which were woven 
cherubim with large wings : this was the veil of the Temple. 
The first cell was called the Holy Place ; and contained, near 
the northern wall, the Table of Shewbread ; on the south, the 
Golden Seven-branched Candlestick ; in the midst, a little 
towards the east, was the altar of incense, on which, twice a 
day, morning and evening, incense was burnt in honour of 
Jehovah. 

Behind the Veil was nothing. The Holy of Holies 
was empty. Since the disappearance of the Ark of the 
Covenant, the cell enclosed nothing but a stone called the 
Foundation (Schethiya), austere symbol of him who is the 
foundation of all . 1 The Jewish Temple recalls those of 
Egypt and the whole ancient world ; the same idea inspired 
their architecture : they were essentially the dwelling-place of 
the divinity. In Christian churches man and God dwell 


1 Cf. Bell.Jud ., v. 5; Antiq ., ii. 8; i. 22. 


194 


JESUS CHRIST. 


together ; but the ancient Temples were reserved for God : 
he alone was there. The sanctuary was his cell : inaccessible 
to all, save only the high priest, who might enter it at rare 
intervals. It was surrounded on all sides by vestibules and 
porches, or vast halls with pillars, in which the different 
classes of the nation met, approaching nearer, according to 
their rank, to the God who resided in the depths of this 
mysterious sanctuary. 

The priestly class surrounded the Holy Place. The 
Egyptians, more than other people, had their colossal wall, 
built on a slope, like a stone veil at the entrance of the halls, 
opposing an insurmountable barrier to the profane. 

The J ews had a still loftier barrier: death, the threat of which 
was engraved upon the columns, all round the porch ; and the 
terrible majesty of Jehovah was thus declared. The high 
priest entered alone, once a year, into the sanctuary ; the 
priests and the Levites might only touch the walls ; the holy 
people themselves could only look at it from a distance ; and 
the profane, the Gentiles, from the foot of the Corinthian gate, 
could only with difficulty, through clouds of incense, see the 
smoke and fire on the altar of burnt offering. 

There, in the Court of the Gentiles, and the Court of Israel, 
occurred a great number of the scenes in the public life of 
Jesus ; there he was now to appear, to attract the attention 
of the people, to disturb the Sanhedrin and the religious 
authority by a beginning of his career full of energy and 
strength. 

On his arrival at Jerusalem he went direct to the Temple ; l 
and must have entered by the gate of Susa, which opened 
upon the valley of Kedron, and was the first in the way ot 
pilgrims coming from the Mount of Olives ; it gave admission 
into Solomon’s Porch and the Court of the Gentiles, which 
was called the First Temple. 

1 John ii. 14, etc. 


1) 




o 

0) 

r—4 

a 

a 

<D 

h 

<D 

XI 


c 

S 



D 

-C 

a 

D 

</) 

o 

o 

■M 

ixO 

{5 

43 


■'003 
'BBS 
'8880 
I B B G> 

) Q B B 
10 0 0 
i s e o 

I 09 Q 

> B Q B 
15 8 8 


c 

cj 

i“—I 

PH 


B 




cr> 


© a a a 


s a e a 


a a s a a 


ess 
8 0 8 


BBS 

h b n 



£ 

CD 


CD 

rs 

U 2 

h 3 

P 

o3 

o 


o 

<D 

OQ 






. IFM 3uipunoxmg 

.sjsaug oqj joj smooy 

. S3 !I°H jo ^ 1 °H aqi 

.ureianf) uuiuo[XqBg 

• • • aoBjg jC[OH aqi jo ‘ [B03H 

•• XjEnpuEg aqj jo qojog 

. sinqnsaA 

■• Suuqqo Juing jo xeqy 
.saqpBJSj sqi jo jjnoQ 

.3TB0 S JOUBOIjq 

. (uioog) q-eqqstq 

. uauicqvY gqj jo jino 3 

.(raoog) q'eqqsig 

. 31^0 

ireiqjuucQ jo ‘[njuncag 

.sojqirao aqi jo ptioQ 

.qojog s,uotuo[og 


-ft 

S» 


a Q G 

< CQ U 


•S 




« 

CG 

5 

Aj 




II | 
O ^ 


R £ 


£ 

ft -O 

K>» Hi*. 




S ' U- 
^ W'ct, 
< Z m H fc 


fto 

•I 

■R 


CQ 


( 3 t 

Si 

§ 


Jo 

0 

op 

o o 




v Co 


r 5 ^ 

° 5; 

X « 




| 

«o 




j § 


5 

^ -s 




CG 


s s? 
k § 
8 <2 

<o ^ 


k 

S' 

<£ 

^3 

R 

t -J 


-5 

£ 


^ ft 

ft ^ 

§ -§i 3 

fR <> <s 
K “> Cj 


!j 0 

l) 

<cy 

-ft 

V, 

^ s 

k <3 
R -ES 

^ £ 


ft ,ft 
V 

P; 


s 




R 
ft 

-■R § 

S S 


s 

a 


'z O a. 0*cZcoh'X> 


8 

CG 










































































































































































































































































































JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 195 

At the approach of the great feasts, and of the Passover 
above all, the crowd pressed under these vast galleries : there 
was a noisy and tumultuous coming and going. The money¬ 
changers had their tables there, and, since all which was 
needed for the ablutions and sacrifices could only be bought 
with sacred money, here was the exchange for Gentile money, 
and, in violation of the law, this exchange was made a matter 
of profit. The dealers occupied a part of the court, and 
thither were brought, into pens as of a slaughter-house, whole 
flocks of oxen, bulls and goats, sheep and lambs. The sellers 
of doves had their stalls by the side of those shops where salt, 
oil, incense, and everything necessary for the altar service, was 
sold. The cries of the animals mixed with the noise of the 
crowd, the voice of the dealers with the eager disputes of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees. Usury, venality, and the sharp 
desire for gain, corrupted the most holy things, engendered 
revolting and scandalous abuses, and often found accomplices 
amongst those very people who ought to have been incor¬ 
ruptible judges, inexorable censors. The masters, the rabbis > 
had many fine sayings on the respect due to the Temple : 
“ Let no one enter there,” they said, “ with his beast, his shoes, 
or his purse, and without shaking the dust from his feet. 
Let none make the Temple a pathway, nor a place for spit¬ 
ting.” 1 Meanwhile, the exchange of money, the choice and 
purchase of animals destined for sacrifice, which ought to 
have been made outside the gates, took place in the sacred 
enclosure, in the very place of prayer. It became no longer 
a temple, but a market and a bazaar. 

This sight must have often angered Jesus, and he had 
suffered in silence ; but to-day the time for action had come. 
He gave free course to his zeal and sacred anger, and, gather¬ 
ing together the cords which served to tie the animals, he 
made a scourge and set himself to cast out of the Temple all 


1 Talmud BabyL, Jevamoth, fol. vi. 2. 


96 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the traders with their sheep and oxen ; then he overthrew the 
tables of the money-changers, and said to those who sold 
doves in the name of the family of the high priests : “ Take 
these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house 
of merchandise .” 1 

His power was irresistible, and all obeyed it; in seeing him 
his disciples recalled the expression of a popular psalm, which 
said of the Messiah : “ The zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
up .” 2 There was, indeed, something divine in this act of holy 
vigour. One man, alone, scarcely known, with a scourge in 
his hand, without official authority, who thus cast out the 
merchants with their animals, while none resisted him, either 
the crowd or the servants of the Temple, or their soldiers, such 
an one showed a grandeur and an energy worthy of God ; he 
did not do this simply in the name of order, but as a prophet, 
as a reformer, as Messiah ; he did not act simply as a messen¬ 
ger of God, but as a master; he treated the dwelling-place of 
Jehovah as his own: it was the habitation of his Father, from 
which he had a right to drive all that troubled and dis¬ 
honoured it. 

The conscience of mankind has applauded and still applauds 
the religious wrath of Jesus. It is probable that the crowd 
saw with sympathy the new prophet assail those who trafficked 
in holy things, under the shadow of the Temple, and to its 
detriment. The justice and courage of a man who revolts 
against abuses is always pleasing to the soul of the people. 

As soon as the first moment was over, Jesus was pointed 
out to those who were the guardians of the Temple. They 
came to him and said : By what right dost thou forbid that 
which the priests allow ? What sign dost thou show to make 
thy violence legitimate ? 3 Jesus answered by one of those 
mysterious sayings which those who spoke with him did not 

1 John ii. 16. 

2 Psalm lxix. 9. 

3 John ii. 18, etc. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 197 

always understand, but which revealed his prophetic intuition 
and which the future could alone verify. “Destroy this 
Temple,” he said, pointing with his hand to his own breast, 
“and in three days I will raise it up.” St. John, the eye¬ 
witness of the scene, must have remarked the gesture of Jesus, 
and in his account he is careful to add that the Master spoke 
of his body, the true temple where the Godhead dwelt in 
person, which the Jews, in fact, were to destroy, and which he 
himself was to raise from the dead. The Jews, misunder¬ 
standing the answer of Jesus, cried : “Forty and six years was 
this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three 
days ? ,,;l 

The abuses against which Jesus protested as Messiah and 
the Son of God, were continued under the connivance of the 
authorities, who, instead of forbidding them, made them 
profitable. Two years later, on the eve of his betrayal, again 
acting as a master, and in the house of his Father, he was 
again to expel the same traders with their sheep and oxen, 
again to overturn the tables of the money-changers with their 
purses and piles of coin. But if this act of indignant zeal did 
not succeed as a material reform, it obtained a still higher 
result and the effect he desired. Christ had declared, in the 
face of the multitude and the Jewish authorities, that he was 
the Master of the Temple and the Son of God. The scene 
must have been much talked of, and public attention eagerly 
directed towards the new prophet. He pleased the people, 
but shocked and wounded the chiefs, priests, and elders, with 
those who were faithful to them, the indifferent and satisfied 
classes, all who were rendered careless by authority and wealth, 
the partizans of custom and peace at any price, all who held 
in any degree to existing power. Societies and men are 
always the same. 

This scene in the public life of Jesus marks the date of the 


1 See Appendix A for the chronological value of this saying. 


198 


JESUS CHRIST. 


first opposition that he excited. The conflict was hence¬ 
forward open between himself and national and religious 
authority ; it was inevitable and would be pushed to its natural 
results. The expulsion of the traders left such an impression 
that the mysterious words of Jesus, spoken on this occasion, 
brought about his condemnation; his enemies misrepre¬ 
sented it, and endeavoured to make it an accusation of a 
mortal crime; he was to be accused of having desired to 
destroy the Temple, and of giving himself out as able to 
rebuild it in three days. 

However, the presence of Jesus at Jerusalem was not 
otherwise disturbed. He was present at the Passover, on the 
very day of the ceremony ; he worked many miracles, but the 
historian of that time of his life does not give us the details. 
They were, as we shall see later, cures of every kind, for Jesus 
loved to reveal his mission by his benefits. The multitude 
thronged around him, and a great number who witnessed his 
miracles regarded him as the Messiah; but he hid himself from 
them , 1 according to the express remark of the evangelist. 

It often happens that a man is carried away by an 
opinion which he has himself created, and which is loud in 
his praise. Public favour leads him further than he wishes, 
and, instead of mastering it, he submits to and follows it; 
while he declares himself to be the ruler of the crowd, 
he is only its slave ; while he believes it subdued, it is 
only dazzled ; convinced, it is but curious ; devoted to his 
person and cause, it obeys only its own interests and its 
selfishness. As soon as he asks it for any sacrifice, it with¬ 
draws and betrays him, and in its revolt and anger breaks 
to pieces him who thought himself its idol. 

Jesus never obeyed it for an instant; he knew what was 
in man, and had no need that anyone should teach him . 2 

1 John ii. 24. 

2 John ii. 25. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. I99 

From the first time he met it he judged the multitude, knew 
it to be inconstant and vain, greedy of novelty and comfort, 
easy to intimidate and lead astray, always ready to be moved 
by wonders or by flattery, prone to sudden resentment against 
those who would teach it the lessons of truth and the 
restraints of justice. He foresaw that it would be the play¬ 
thing of masters, to whom it was in servitude. This was no 
ground fit for the divine seed ; Jerusalem, in spite of the love 
he bore her, inspired him with distrust. 

The influence of Jesus on this first journey was not limited 
to the popular class; it made its way among the rich, the 
doctors and priests; his name, his conduct, and his words 
were to be the object of lively discussion. 

Those who awake the enthusiasm of the multitude rarely 
leave its masters indifferent. God has his elect everywhere; 
but those in the official world, whom truth enlightens, rarely 
have the same frankness, or the same vigour as simple 
souls among the people. Their position hampers them, they 
have a thousand interests to consider, and they only answer 
with caution to the appeal of their conscience. Among 
these was a certain Nicodemus, an influential Pharisee, he 
seems to have belonged to the great council ; 1 according 
to the Talmud 2 his true name was Bonai; he was a 
priest, and also an official charged with the administra¬ 
tion of the canals and wells, in order to provide for the 
needs of strangers who flocked into the town on the 
great feast-days; he was still living during the siege of 
Jerusalem by Titus, and he belonged to one of the three 
wealthiest Jewish families in the city. When persecution 
afterwards raged against the disciples of Jesus his goods 
were confiscated, and his family reduced to poverty. 

1 John vii. 50. 

2 Taanith, fol. 20, I; Sanhedrim , fol. 43, I. Cf. Lightfoot, Horae 
Hebraicae et Talmud., in Evangel. Joan. 


200 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Nicodemus had been struck by the teaching and, above 
all, by the miracles of Jesus. In the sincerity of his new 
faith, he wished for explanation and instruction from the lips 
of the Master himself; he asked for a secret conversation , 1 
and came to him by night, in order, no doubt, not to awaken 
any suspicion, since to come to Jesus, at that moment, was 
compromising. In spite of his reserve, such an action denotes 
an upright heart; to seek the light, even timidly, is always 
worthy of praise and respect. 

What astonished the Pharisees and all the learned men 
who acted in good faith, from the first manifestation of Jesus, 
was a return and awakening of the prophetic spirit. Jesus 
did not give the impression of a scribe, a doctor, or a Hagga- 
dist, but of a prophet; his word did not, like that of all the 
masters who, for four centuries, had taught the people, rest 
on the letter of the Law and on human tradition, but was a 
direct inspiration. No name, in the mouth of a Pharisee, was 
greater or more flattering than that of Prophet. 

By this title then Nicodemus addressed him : “ We know 
that thou art a teacher sent from God ; for no man can do the 
miracles which thou doest, if God be not with him.” 

Jesus, who read to the very bottom of this uncertain soul, 
went straight to the question which preoccupied and agitated 
all religious spirits at the time of Nicodemus, and said, “Verily 
verily, I say unto you, Unless a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God.” To be born again, that deep saying 
in which was contained the whole doctrine of Jesus on the 
spiritual Kingdom and the function of Messiah, disconcerted 
Nicodemus and wounded all his prejudices. He was one who 
believed it possible to speak of new birth to a Gentile or a 
sinner ; but a true son of Abraham, an Israelite of pure race, 
a zealous Pharisee, had no need of transformation. Surely he 
was worthy by his race, and his faithfulness, of the Kingdom of 


John iii. i, etc. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 201 

heaven. Affecting therefore to give to the word of Jesus an 
entirely material sense, he answered, not without some artifice 
and a touch of irony which ill concealed his embarrassment : 
“ How can a man be born again when he is old ? can he enter 
again into his mother’s womb, and be born ? ” 

Jesus renewed his declaration, and explained it: “Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and the 
Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” The bap¬ 
tism of water, as John gave it, prepared for regeneration, but 
the outpouring of the Spirit promised in the times of the 
Messiah alone could accomplish it. To overthrow at one blow 
all the race prejudices of Nicodemus, Jesus included in the 
same inferiority, the same worthlessness, and the same want of 
power, all that is not God and his Kingdom : “ That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh,” whatever be its name, its privilege 
and its race ; “ that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” 
Between the flesh and the Spirit there is a great gulf. Spirit 
may be poured out on flesh ; flesh cannot of itself be lifted to¬ 
wards the Spirit; whoever will enter into the Kingdom of the 
Spirit must be born of the Spirit. Jesus said again : “ Marvel 
not that I said unto you that you must be born again.” The 
Spirit is mysterious and free as the wind ; “it bloweth where it 
listeth ; thou hearest its voice and thou knowest not whence it 
cometh, nor whither it goeth. So is every man who is born of 
the Spirit.” He is as inscrutable as God from whom he comes, 
as God to whom he returns. 

Nicodemus, astonished and perplexed, endeavoured to 
comprehend the mystery to which the learning of the Phari¬ 
sees gave him no clue. He said, “ How can these things be ? ” 
Then said Jesus unto him, “Art thou a master in Israel and 
knowest not these things ? ” 

The prophets indeed had everywhere announced the out¬ 
pouring of the Spirit for the Messianic time, an outpouring 
which should make of Israel a holy people, and create in it 
that new life of which Jesus spoke to Nicodemus: the very 


20 2 


JESUS CHRIST. 


soul of their doctrine and their hope. But one condition was 
laid upon them : faithful obedience to the word of God’s 
messengers. Jesus demanded this teachableness from Nico- 
demus ; he who believes understands ; he who shelters himself 
behind his human and literal knowledge, remains in darkness. 

Then, at once joining himself to the prophets whose 
authority Nicodemus could not misunderstand, Jesus said : 
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, 
and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not our witness. 
If I have told you earthly things,” that is to say, the condi¬ 
tions necessary for every man to enter into the Kingdom, 
“and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of 
heavenly things,” and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God ? 

Nicodemus was silenced ; and Jesus felt that the reproach 
had taught him to be trustful; he then opened to him 
that divine world which none can know except the Son of 
Man, for no one has ascended up into heaven, and known 
the will of God, save he who came down from heaven, the 
Son of Man. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness , 1 even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
eternal life.” Thus Jesus allowed the great destiny of the 
Messiah to become visible in the same ray of light where 
the glory and the death of the Son of Man were mingled 
together, and where the death was hidden by the glory. 
The whole mystery of this destiny has its unfathomable 
source in the love of God. “ God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now is the hour 
of salvation, the crisis, and it must run its course. A question 
arises in view of this separation of mankind round the Son of 
Man. Some believe and come, others believe not and are 
rejected. “ And this is the condemnation, that light is come 


1 Numbers xxi. 9. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 203 


into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, 
because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil 
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds 
should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the 
light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are 
wrought in God.” That which comes from God returns to 
God. 

This conversation of Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus is 
the first written revelation of the Master’s teaching; it has 
been preserved for us by the fourth Gospel, in a few sentences 
which sum it up and allow us to see its main lines and its 
depth. 

We see what the Kingdom of God is: the participation of 
man in the very life of God ; we see how we enter into it: by 
a second birth which makes of man a new being, no longer 
carnal but spiritual ; we learn the condition of this birth : the 
baptism of water and of the Spirit; and we know henceforth 
that to understand the mystery we must have faith in the word 
of God’s messengers, and of him who is above them all, the 
Son of God. Jesus’ words faintly foreshadowed this truth, 
which after-events were to make perfectly clear: he was the 
great sign raised in the midst of the ages and the nations ; 
a sad yet wonderful sign, as was the cross by which he 
triumphed and on which he was to die. 

What he said in the ear of a few Jews in that memorable 
night in April, within the walls of a little chamber, has en¬ 
lightened the whole world. The Spirit always bloweth where 
it listeth; souls touched by him are born again, and that 
which was flesh becomes Spirit; that is the grand fact of the 
life of consciences. The Son of Man, then unknown, has been 
thenceforth lifted into the open sky which enlightens man¬ 
kind ; all eyes see him and shall see him. Those who see 
him with faith are members incorporate with him in eternal 
life ; the rest yet abide in flesh and blood, sunk in darkness 


20 


204 


JESUS CHRIST. 


and mortality. Every saying of Jesus is a lasting light, his 
words do not pass away ; the truths which he has spoken 
remain as immovable as the firmament, time explains them 
instead of effacing them, they lead us into a new world. No 
master, before him or after him, has so spoken ; neither the 
Greek nor Roman moralists, nor the rabbis of Judaea, no 
philosopher, no reformer. His words are no mere abstractions 
or rigid precepts, but life-giving words which interpret the 
deepest facts of conscience, and which conscience alone can 
verify; if it has the courage to make trial of God with faith 
and sacrifice. 

The evangelist does not tell us the effect on Nicpdemus ; 
we may suppose that such revelations from such lips enlight¬ 
ened the soul of the Pharisee : he became a disciple of the 
Master, in secret, but always ready to defend him. We shall 
hear him later, in a tumultuous scene of the Sanhedrin, when 
his colleagues, the doctors, were resolved on the arrest of 
Jesus, raise his voice for justice and exclaim, “ Doth our law 
permit that any man should be condemned before he is heard ?” 1 
And when Jewish hatred had succeeded in doing away with 
Christ, he was to follow his Master faithfully even to death ; 
he was to join himself to Joseph of Arimathea and the other 
disciples, to render to the Crucified the rites of sepulture, and 
he was to come to embalm the body, bringing a rich provision 
of spices, a mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred 
pounds in weight . 2 

Jesus did not prolong his sojourn at Jerusalem. When 
the feast was over, he left the town with his disciples and 
dwelt in the country of Judaea . 3 This vague expression does 
not allow us to determine the exact spot. He went in dif¬ 
ferent directions through the country, which thus received 

1 John vii. 51. 

2 John xix. 39. 

8 John iii. 22. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 20 $ 

earlier than Samaria and Galilee, the first-fruits of his 
ministry. No memory has remained of his journey ; we find 
no trace of him at Bethlehem, nor at Karim, nor at Hebron, 
nor at Engedi, nor on the confines of Idumaea. St. John 
records only that all Judaea was filled with his voice, and that, 
from all the villages and towns, the crowd followed to hear him. 

By preaching first in Judaea he was obedient to his 
mission, for Judaea was the necessary centre of all prophetic 
and Messianic action. A messenger of God must necessarily 
work in this soil sacred above all others, in which was the 
T emple, where was the most illustrious tribe, and where the 
national and religious life was preserved in its most ardent 
and purest form. Providence had caused that Jesus should be 
born there, the land of Judah was therefore his true country; 
in the desert of Judah John had announced his advent; and 
there Jesus was to show himself to his people. 

This sojourn in Judaea lasted for several months; Jesus 
left it to return to Galilee by Samaria, four months before 
the harvest, that is to say, in December of the year 781 from 
the foundation of Rome. 1 One phrase in the fourth Gospel 
gives us a short but valuable note on this period of his 
preaching in Judaea. “Jesus himself baptized not, but his 
disciples, 2 he made proselytes, and all came to him,” 3 It 
appears evident that Jesus wished to consecrate the first times 
of his public life, by himself preparing the people to receive 
his word and to submit to his action. He did not begin over 
again, but rather completed and confirmed what John the 
Baptist had attempted with so much trouble. The whole of 
his preaching seems to have been summed up in two lines, 
which the Gospel of St. Mark has preserved for us. 4 He no 

1 John iv. 35. 

2 John iii. 22, 26. 

3 John iv. 2. 

+ Mark 1. 15. 


206 


JESUS CHRIST. 


longer said, as John had done: “The time is at hand” ; but 
“The time is fulfilled.” If, as did his forerunner, he proclaimed 
the necessary law of transformation and penitence, he also added, 
“ The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and he demanded faith 
in the Gospel for the news which he bore and realised ; he 
allowed his disciples to baptize like John, and made this a 
prelude to the institution of Christian baptism, which was to 
be the effective sign of the spiritual regeneration of man. 
The attraction of his word and his person was powerful; all 
the country of Judaea was once more moved, and the crowd 
flocked towards him, attracted by the renown of his virtue 
and his miracles. 

One of the dominant ideas which at that moment excited 
the crowd and its teachers, the numerous disciples of John 
and those of Jesus, was the purification necessary to be 
worthy of the Kingdom. A controversy between one 
or more Jews and the disciples of the Baptist, on this 
very matter of purification, was a .sign of the state 
of public opinion. 1 We do not know the ground of the 
dispute, whether it were the relative value of the ablutions 
prescribed by the Law, of the rite instituted by John, and of 
baptism as practised by the disciples of Jesus; nor does any¬ 
thing in the narrative of the fourth Gospel enable us to clear up 
the difficulty. The striking fact brought to light by the his¬ 
torian, and the only one of any importance, is the annoyance 
of the followers of the Baptist at the increasing success of Jesus. 

After the discussion they came to their master, who was 
still baptising the multitude, not long before the end of his 
career. He was then at Enon, a little place renowned for the 
abundance of its springs, and of which the name and the 
traces are lost. St. Jerome, following Eusebius, places it near 
Salem, in the valley of the Jordan, on the right bank, eight 


1 John iii. 25, etc. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 20; 

miles south of Scythopolis. Perhaps, therefore, it belonged 
to the territory and province of Judaea. “ Master,” said his 
disciples to John, “ he who was with thee beyond Jordan, to 
whom thou gavest witness, baptizes, and all men seek him.” 

Anger and jealous humour breathed through these words. 
The success of Jesus affected those who had joined the 
Baptist; it seemed to them that the glory of their master was 
declining, that he would be eclipsed by a new-comer, and they 
could not resign themselves to a defeat in which they found 
themselves involved. 

Self-denial is a rare virtue, and one of the most difficult; 
it is practised sometimes by an individual, but never by parties 
and schools. Chiefs of parties do themselves honour by self- 
abnegation, but they never succeed in inspiring their disciples 
with it. The great soul of John had experienced this. In 
spite of his ascendency, his heroic forgetfulness of himself 
before Christ, his repeated efforts to gain souls for him, he did 
not succeed in giving over to Jesus all who called him master, 
and the disciples of John were, under the name of Mendaites, 
to become a sect who would last through many ages. 

The complaint of his disciples called forth from John a 
new testimony concerning the Messiah. Personal renuncia¬ 
tion has rarely been couched in more sincere and dignified 
language, nor in words more humble and delicate; and, 
certainly, has never inspired a nobler eulogy of the person by 
whom it was to be carried out. “ Why all this trouble and 
these empty discussions?” said the Baptist. “A man can 
receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” 1 If I 
am a voice crying in the desert, God hath given me that voice. 
I am but what he has made me. “Ye yourselves bear me 
witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent 
before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but 


1 John iii. 27. 


208 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, 
rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my 
joy therefore is fulfilled.” He knew that his destiny was 
accomplished, and, resigning himself with a firm and quiet 
mind, said : “ He must increase, but I must decrease.” 

The thought of the Messiah in whom he saw himself 
absorbed, took entire possession of him from his first interview 
with Jesus at the Jordan. Our common human speech is not 
enough to describe it as he saw it, and he invented a new 
language. 

“ It is he that cometh from above,” he said, recalling the 
words of his father Zacharias, in announcing the Christ: “ He 
is the dayspring from on high. 1 He is above all,” for all 
others come of the earth; and “ whoever is of the earth is 
earthly and speaketh of the earth.” Nature is determined by 
origin, and nature again determines our words and actions. 
But “ he cometh from above ; what he speaketh, that he hath 
seen and heard ” in heaven, where truth is as light, changeless, 
boundless. He beareth witness of that which he hath seen 
and heard; but, he added, looking towards his disciples, 

“ his witness is not received ; ” and yet, to receive his witness 
“ is to set to our seal that God is true.” 

His words are the words of God ; he cannot err. God 
has given him the Spirit without measure. The vision of his 
Baptism passes before him. “ The Father,” he said, “ loveth 
the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that 
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that be- 
lieveth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God 
abideth on him.” 

These words, the last by which he called on his disciples 
to attach themselves to Jesus, were the testament of this 
great prophet. The wrath of God came back to the lips of 
John as at the beginning of his ministry; then it was the 


Luke i. 78. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 20 9 

anger of justice with which he menaced those who were 
obstinate in their impenitence ; now, he terrified the blind 
who resisted the appeal of the Messiah, by the anger of love 
unrecognized. Henceforward, he was to be silent. He had 
nothing more to say about his Master, but we shall see him 
hereafter make a last effort, from the depths of his prison, to 
induce the Master to speak and convince his obstinate disciples. 

The news of the success of Jesus in the country of Judaea 
came to the ears of the Pharisees, who were moved by it The 
jealous rivalry of the disciples of John was to reinforce the 
rising opposition already disclosed in the city. Jesus was 
warned of it ; his disciples, many of whom had been the 
disciples of John, and who formed a constant bond between 
himself and John, told him the incidents as they occurred ; and 
he would not give too strong an impulse to the hostility of 
his enemies. His work had hardly begun. It would be wise 
to retire from the strife, for absence closes many conflicts. 
Jesus quitted Judaea, and, attended by his disciples, he directed 
his journey towards Galilee, taking the road by Samaria. 


CHAPTER VI. 

JESUS AMONG THE SAMARITANS. 

Samaria owes its name to its chief city, which in its turn 
was so called from the hill Chamoron, on which Omri, King of 
Israel, built it nine centuries before Jesus ; the hill itself was 
named after Chamor, one of the sons of Canaan. 1 We find 
thus an example of the perpetuity of names and traditions in 
that unchanging East, where man, after having hoped so long, 
can now only remember. 

Samaria, after the deposition and banishment of Arche- 
laus, was part of the province of Judaea, and was directly 
governed by the Roman procurators. It is a delightful 
country, of valleys and mountains, between Judaea and Galilee ; 
it extended from the plain of Sharon to that of the Jordan, is 
bounded on the north by the plain of Jezreel, and on the 
south by the Wady Lubban. Josephus 2 speaks of its fertility, 
its fruits and pastures, the milk of its flocks, and the abun¬ 
dance of its water-springs. Even at the present day, in spite 
of the desolation of the whole of Palestine. Samaria is less 
sombre than Judaea, austere and hard as is its rocky soil. The 
outline of the mountains is soft, the hills are rounded, the 
valleys broad with murmuring streams ; the olive tree, whose 
worn aspect adds to the sadness of Judaea, is quite another 

1 Gen. x. 18. 

2 Antiq. viii. 12, 5. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 211 

thing in Samaria ; the trunks and boughs are higher, and the 
foliage brighter and more silvery. 

The Samaritans had been hated for centuries by the men 
of Galilee and Judaea; and time, instead of softening it, had 
only deepened their hatred. Their enmity dates from the 
division of the Ten Tribes, which broke the unity of the 
kingdom of David ; and afterwards came the exile and the fall 
of the kingdom of Israel. Samaria, desolated by exile, was 
invaded by colonies of foreigners coming from the provinces 
of Babel, Cuthra, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, sent by 
order of Shalmaneser to repeople the country. The blood of 
Ephraim was mixed with that of these Gentiles, and, although 
the religion of Moses remained supreme among the Samari¬ 
tans, the Israelites, refusing to recognise them as brethren, 
added contempt to their old hatred, and called them Cuthites, 
from the name of one of the Gentile tribes with which they 
had mingled their blood. 1 When the Judaean colonists, led by 
Zerubbabel, arrived from Babylon, and were about to rebuild 
Jerusalem and the Temple, under the direction of Ezra and 
Nehemiah, they indignantly rejected all help from the Sa¬ 
maritans. This was a cruel insult, remembered in Samaria 
two centuries later. Manasses, the brother of the high priest 
Jaddua, availed himself of this enmity and built with Alex¬ 
ander’s permission, on Mount Gerizim, a temple to rival that 
of Jerusalem. 2 This sacrilegious outrage redoubled the ani¬ 
mosity of true Jews against heretics and schismatics; the 
temple of Gerizim was destroyed by the Asmonaean, John 
Hyrcanus, a hundred and twenty-nine years before Jesus 
Christ. The ruins were still extant, and the mountain, stripped 
of its sanctuary, was still a place of prayer for the conquered. 
The few survivors of the Jew«ish sect called it holy and 
blessed ; and as the Jews turned towards Zion at the hour of 
prayer, so the Samaritans looked towards Gerizim. 

1 Acts ix. 14. 

2 Antiq. xi. 8, 2. 


212 


JESUS CHRIST. 


In the first century, in the time of Jesus, the relations 
between the Jews and the Samaritans had lost nothing of their 
rancorous hostility. In this obstinate race all feelings endure 
and grow stronger. There was some danger in passing 
through Samaria on the way to Jerusalem ; many Galilaeans 
went out of their road to avoid it, and passed either through 
the valley of Jordan or across the plain of Sharon. The 
Samaritans avenged themselves for contempt by violence, 
and denied all hospitality. 

Their outcast state, for many centuries, had kept them 
absolutely strangers to the whole religious development of 
Israel. The Pentateuch and perhaps the older prophets were 
enough for them ; but they knew nothing of the teaching of 
the Pharisees. The only point of contact with the Jews at 
that time, was that, like them, they expected the Messiah, the 
great prophet announced by Moses . 1 This hope was 
exclusively religious : no political ambition, no earthly dream, 
stained its purity. Their great prophet was not, as in the 
case of the Jews, one who should have universal dominion, but 
a messenger like unto Moses, a legislative reformer, whose 
office would be entirely moral and spiritual. 

They not only rejected the tradition and the observances 
of the doctors, but ignored them. No words can express the 
disdain which the masters and rigid orthodox had for this 
small population so abominable in their eyes ; they avoided 
their very name; the greatest insult in their mouth was not 
the epithet of Gentile or Publican, but that of Samaritan; 
and Jesus was not exempt from this reproach . 2 

Far from sharing in the sentiments and prejudices of 
his countrymen, Jesus loved the excommunicated folk of 
Samaria ; 3 and when, on quitting Judaea, he chose to traverse 

1 Deut. xviii. 18. 

2 John viii. 48. 

8 Luke x., xvii. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 213 


their territory, it was because he knew that he should there 
find, closed against his enemies, ground prepared to receive his 
word ; nor was his expectation deceived. 

All that ancient land of Canaan is full of memories, and 
the most sacred were grouped round the ancient city 
of Sichem. It took its name from the chief of a tribe of 
Heveens, was situated between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, 
where two roads crossed, one of which was the communication 
between the Great Sea or Mediterranean, and the Jordan and 
the country beyond it ; the other was the road between 
Mesopotamia and the Chaldaean plains, and Egypt and the’ 
West. Near at hand was the oak forest of Moreh, where 
Abraham had pitched his tent, and where God had promised 
to give the land to his race. In memory of his vision, the 
father of the faithful had set up, in that place, a stone to 
Jehovah . 1 

Jacob, on his return from Mesopotamia, where he had 
served his uncle Laban for twice seven years, had pitched his 
tent there ; and he also had raised a sacrificial stone to the 
Almighty God of Israel. The patriarch bought a field near 
Moreh, and dug there a deep well, for the needs of his family 
and his flocks . 2 There Joseph, dying in Egypt, prayed that 
he might be buried. Moses, flying from the land of the 
Pharaohs, remembered the last wishes of the patriarch ; and 
brought his bones to the boundaries of Canaan , 3 that Joshua 
might afterwards bury them in the field bought by Jacob from 
the sons of Hamor . 4 There again, on the slopes of Ebal and 
Gerizim, Joshua set the twelve tribes in order, and caused 
the proclamation of the blessings and curses recorded in the 
Book of Deuteronomy . 5 

1 Genesis xii. 7. 

2 Genesis xxiii. 18. 

3 Exodus xiii. 19. 

4 J oshua xxiv. 32. 

6 Deut xxvii.-xxx. 


214 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Sichem, as it grew great, became the capital of the king¬ 
dom of Israel, but its glory soon faded. In the time of Jesus 
the province of Samaria had for its chief city a new town, 
built by Herod to the west of the old capital, on the hill above 
the plain of Sharon, and named by him Sebaste after the 
Emperor Augustus. But Sichem remained venerable by its 
memories ; its fortunate situation near the two routes which 
made the principal lines of communication between east and 
west, north and south, gave it a great commercial importance ; 
the Jews in scorn called it Sychar . 1 

When Jesus, following the very road by which Abraham 
and Jacob had passed, returned from Judaea into Galilee,“ Then 
cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near 
to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph . 2 
Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied 
with his journey, sat thus on the well.” It was in the winter, 
in the middle of December, at the hour of midday, the sixth 
hour of the day among the Orientals. The disciples were 
gone into the city to buy food, leaving him alone. He 
seemed to await someone’s coming. “ There cometh a 
woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, 
Give me to drink.” But she, knowing from his language 
that a Jew was addressing her, refused. “Then saith the 
woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a 
Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for 
the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered 
and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it 

1 The name of Sichar or Sycar appears to have been an injurious nick¬ 
name given by the Jews at some time to the town of Sichem. It may be 
derived from the Hebrew, Seqer, a lie, or Sicor , a drunkard. In the first 
case, the Jews would have alluded to the worship of the Samaritans, in 
which was a mixture of Paganism. In the second case, they would have 
spoken of a vice which it seems was common to all the inhabitants of 
Mount Ephraim. Many passages in history speak of the drunkards of 
Ephraim. (Isaiah xxviii. i, 3.) 

2 John iv. 1, etc. 








The road by which it is approached from the south passes through an olive-grove and under a ruined aqueduct. 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 21 5 

is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have 
asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The 
woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, 
and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living 
water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave 
us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and 
his cattle ? ” Jesus following out his own thoughts and wishing 
to elevate the woman’s, answered her, “ Whosoever drinketh 
of this water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the 
water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water 
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing 
up into everlasting life. The woman,” her curiosity aroused 
rather than satisfied, “ saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, 
that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.” Jesus could see 
plainly that the Samaritan woman did not perceive his mean¬ 
ing ; in order to open her eyes to the truth, he would pierce 
her conscience: that is where the stroke must be dealt if a 
soul is to be opened to receive God. “ Jesus saith unto her, Go, 
call thy husband, and come hither.” The word struck home ; 
unwilling either to yield or to tell an untruth, she took refuge 
in ambiguity : “ I have no husband,” she said. “ Jesus said unto 
her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: for thou hast had 
five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: 
in that saidst thou truly. The woman,” feeling that she was 
found out, “saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a 
prophet.” Then her thoughts rose higher: “ Our fathers,” she 
added, pointing to Gerizim, “ worshipped in this mountain; 
and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to 
worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour 
cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at 
Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: 
we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the 
hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall wor¬ 
ship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh 
such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship 


216 


JESUS CHRIST. 


him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith 
unto him,” giving utterance to what had become the popular 
belief, “ I know that Messias cometh.” And ready, in the 
simplicity of her faith, to listen at once to his teaching, she 
added, “When he is come, he will tell us all things.” Jesus, 
seeing her mind opened, revealed himself, and said unto 
her, “ I that speak unto thee am he.” 

This meeting with the woman at Jacob’s Well, this demand 
of water to drink, this conversation, these ordinary incidents 
of life, gave occasion to Jesus for a manifestation of himself, 
which was touching and sublime in its confidential character. 
He was the Christ who had come, who was expected by the 
Samaritans, by the Jews, and by all mankind ; he proclaimed 
this to a sinful woman, whom his presence transformed, to 
whom his word revealed eternal life; he called himself the 
Gift of God ; to whomsoever asketh of him, he. communicates 
the Spirit which he called living water, borrowing this symbol 
from the water which he asked of the Samaritan. This Spirit, 
whereof none can know whence he comes and whither he 
goes, is known only by his effects, for he becomes in the soul of 
the believer a springing well, which alone quenches the thirst 
of infinite desire. As earthly springs rise to the level of their 
fount, so the living water of the Spirit leaves the depths of 
God, springs up in the conscience, and loses itself again in 
God. To give this living water was the function of Messiah ; 
he is the true Jacob’s Well, dug by God himself, at the inter¬ 
section of the roads by which passes the stream of mankind ; 
he thus founded an eternal Religion, the worship in spirit and 
in truth. Henceforward, Jerusalem was no more and Gerizim 
no more: he is the only Temple, and this Temple is in every 
soul wherein the Spirit dwells, who adores God in the Spirit 
of love and truth : that is his Church and his Kingdom. 

While Jesus was thus preaching the Gospel to the woman 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 217 

of Samaria, his disciples returned from the town. They won¬ 
dered to see their Master thus conversing, for Jewish customs 
treated women with a certain disdain, they were nevei 
greeted, nor did a man talk in public even with his own wife. 
The rabbis, exaggerating these stern manners, would not even 
teach a woman : “ Throw the words of the Law into the fire,” 
they said with bitter pride, “ rather than communicate them 
to women.” The disciples of Jesus must have been infected 
by these prejudices : hence their surprise. But such was their 
religious respect to their Master that no one dared to show 
any surprise or make any observation ; they did not even 
dare to ask what he was saying to this woman of Samaria. 

Jesus obeyed a higher law, to the great scandal of the 
Pharisees ; he never cared for human traditions nor hesitated 
to trample them under foot, whenever he found them in the 
way of his work. He took on himself all his words and 
deeds, and in the simplest circumstances of life he not only 
escaped from his time and his surroundings, but he was their 
complete master. He was never the mere Jew, with his 
narrow peculiarities ; he was the Son of Man who showed 
himself in eternal beauty and truth ; his acts demanded new 
customs, his words gave more than human clearness to the 
mind, leading it to know the impenetrable secrets of God. 

This conversation at Jacob’s Well with a fallen woman, 
remains one of the most touching evidences of the goodness 
and mercy of Christ; he was already showing himself as the 
Good Shepherd, finding the lost sheep. All that is weak and 
wandering is meant to be of his fold ; helplessness is one of the 
qualifications for it. Womanhood gains elevation and honour 
from this Samaritan, from whom the Master did not disdain 
to ask drink, and with whom he spoke of that mysterious 
water which slakes the thirst of those who, like this woman, 
feel, in their sorrow, a more ardent desire of eternal con¬ 
solation. 

Upon the arrival of the disciples, the Samaritan woman 


218 


JESUS CHRIST. 


retired, leaving her pitcher filled for the service of the way¬ 
farers, and, deeply stirred by what she had heard, went her 
way into the city. She burned to tell to others, to tell to all, 
the cause of her agitation. Jesus knew well that his words 
would be repeated at Sichem. 

Come and see, said she to all whom she met: I have 
found at Jacob’s Well a man who told me all things that ever 
I did : it may be the Messiah. 

The idea that the Great Prophet might have come among 
them stirred up all the city. No one who knows the East, 
with its constant restlessness and its religious curiosity, will 
be surprised that such was the effect of a simple woman’s 
word. The men of Sichem came out, and took their way 
towards the patriarch’s well. 

Meanwhile, Jesus, still seated there, seemed to be absorbed 
not so much in the fatigues of his journey as in the prospect 
of the work that was about to be accomplished, and now just 
begun, in Samaria, by his Father’s Providence. He ate no 
food. “ Master,” said his disciples, “ eat, we pray thee.” But 
he refused. “ As for me,” he said, “ I have meat to eat that ye 
know not of.” They dared say no more, but, without a sus¬ 
picion, as they were, of his hidden meaning, they said quietly 
one to another : “ Hath any man brought him aught to eat ? ” 

Jesus undeceived them. “ My meat,” he added, “ is to do 
the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” 

The greater a man is the more completely he escapes from 
the tyranny of his earthly needs ; the body lives by the earth, 
but the soul is nourished by God; and, satisfied by God, 
sustains and restores the failing body. The sentiment of duty 
existed in Jesus in its highest and purest form. His conscience 
was the voice of his Father speaking within him ; and obedi¬ 
ence was his life. Man fails every hour : distracted, uncertain, 
and inconstant, he yields to his desires and gives way under 
sacrifice ; the will of God demanded heroic sacrifices of Jesus, 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 219 

whose meat was to do the will of him that sent him. But at 
this moment the will of the Father was full of gentleness ; 
after the first difficulties which he encountered in Jerusalem 
and in Judaea, here in Samaria was a land left to him, a 
whole town which rose and followed him. And, indeed, as he 
was speaking of that which was his meat, he turned towards 
Sichem ; and the inhabitants came to meet him. 

He asked of his disciples : “ Say you not, in four months, 
then cometh harvest ? I tell you, lift your eyes and look on 
the fields, for they are white already to harvest.” The crowd 
of Samaritans seemed to him as a ripened cornfield. On see¬ 
ing them come near, he felt a thrill of gladness. “ Happy is 
the husbandman,” he added. The full ears are his reward ; 
“ he gathers them unto life eternal, that both he that soweth 
and he that reapeth may rejoice together.” For we must 
realise the truth, “One soweth, and another reapeth.” The 
Father has divided the task. “ I sent you to reap that which 
you have not sown. Others have laboured, and ye have 
entered into their labours.” 

Jesus was alluding to the patriarchs and prophets, whose 
word, cast on earth as a divine seed, had slept there for long 
ages, but now, at his voice and under his action, was to 
become a harvest ripe for the sickle of his disciples. 

The men of Sichem gave him an enthusiastic reception, 
and begged him to abide with them. Their hostile prejudices 
quickly vanished : Jesus yielded to their request; he went to 
Sichem and remained there two days. 

The rapid summary of St. John gives us no detail of the 
preaching in the town of Sichem. The success was extra¬ 
ordinary ; at the witness of the woman alone many already 
believed in Jesus ; but when they had heard himself, a far 
greater number recognised in him the expected Messiah. 
There was no question of signs and miracles, as at Jerusalem 
and in Judaea; this despised race, excommunicated by the 
21 


220 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Jews, believed as soon as they heard his words. It is 
probable that he revealed to them, as to the woman, the 
mystery of his Messiahship and his Kingdom, to which every 
man is called without distinction of race, on the sole condition 
of believing in his word. He lifted them out of the contempt 
of ages, under which the Jews had overwhelmed them ; as 
they believed in Moses, they believed in the Prophet whose 
advent Moses had announced, and they saw in him the 
Saviour of the world. 

This ministry in Samaria filled Jesus with a holy joy ; he 
encountered no opposition, he met no barrier of prejudices or 
idle doctrines, no human curiosity or mere legalism ; nor 
sinister authority demanding the credentials of his mission ; 
no Pharisee opposing to his word the subtleties of arrogant 
science ; no excited and exacting crowd to demand miracles ; 
he must have seen in this a foretaste of the future of his 
doctrine, when one day, beyond the narrow limits of Judaea, it 
should take possession of the whole Gentile world. This small 
harvest was the prelude of the greater, for he knew that his 
Kingdom was that of the humble and disinherited, the weak 
and poor, the hungry and thirsty after righteousness. The 
greater a man’s need the easier his access to Christ. 

He experienced this in his short career. Samaria received 
him better than Galilee, Galilee than Judaea, the country of 
Judaea better than the city, the people better than the doctors, 
the doctors better than the priesthood, the ignorant better 
than the learned, the sinners than the so-called righteous, 
Gentiles better than Jews. This is a law of the great work of 
salvation by Christ; it is continued and verified through all 
history : the more a man grows great, and is pleased with 
himself, his power, his science, and his false virtue, the more 
opposed is he to the influence of Jesus ; he must be broken 
by’ sorrow, overwhelmed by the sense of his misery, in order 
that he may submit himself and recognise in him, as did the 
Samaritans, the true Saviour of the world. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 221 


Of the town thus evangelised by Jesus there now remains 
only a miserable village called Balata. In the time of 
Vespasian, Sichem was moved further west and became the 
town of “ Flavia,” now Naplous. But an unbroken and 
universal tradition has preserved the memory of Joseph’s 
tomb and Jacob’s field. The well to which the conversation 
of Jesus has given a greater renown than the name of the 
patriarch, is still deep, and in winter half full of water. A 
broken arch allows us to see the original mouth of the well, 
surrounded by a heap of ruins ; five granite columns, broken, 
scattered, and buried under the heaps, and overgrown by tall 
weeds, bear witness to the faith and piety of the first Christians 
who desired to honour the place where Jesus said : The time 
cometh when they shall no longer worship on Gerizim nor at 
Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. 

The corner of the world where these words were pro¬ 
nounced has not kept them; Gerizim and Ebal no longer 
echo them in that brilliant yet barren landscape ; the Mussul¬ 
mans who pass near this ruined well know nothing of him who 
one day sat there, who freed their ancestors in the East and 
their contemporaries in the West from the slavery under which 
they themselves groan. To find the words of Jesus there, 
they must be brought, in a believing soul, from the West to 
which they took their flight. 

The words of the Master are Spirit and Life; they cannot 
be limited by time nor space ; the universe has heard them, and 
hears them still, better than the Samaritan woman or the men 
of Sichem ; they have passed the narrow valley between Ebal 
and Gerizim, and taken possession of the earth ; they have 
roused by millions those who worship the Father in Spirit 
and in Truth, as the Father willed. 

After this two-days’ halt, Jesus continued his journey 
towards Galilee ; the welcome and faith which he had received 
from strangers, who were half Gentiles, had moved him pro- 


222 


JESUS CHRIST. 


foundly. In returning to his country, among his own people, 
where his destiny as Messiah called him, he naturally thought 
of the difficulties which awaited him, the rejection which he 
would provoke, the hardness of heart and violence which he 
had already experienced at Jerusalem. In his sadness he 
compared the Samaritan to the Jew, those whom he was 
eaving with those to whom he came, and he spoke to his 
disciples words often again to rise to his lips: “ A prophet 
is not without honour, save in his own country.” 1 

Galilee, however, did not remain strange or indifferent to 
the increasing renown of Jesus ; the renown of his manifesta¬ 
tion in the city, the success of his ministry among the rural 
population of Judaea, the signs and wonders which were 
added to his personal influence, all contributed to render him 
remarkable among his countrymen. Moreover, a great num¬ 
ber had seen in Jerusalem itself and on the banks of the 
Jordan, his power of working miracles , 2 which was above 
all that which struck minds greedy of marvels. Jesus was 
grieved at this tone of mind ; he reproved this vehement 
desire for miracles ; he saw in it secret selfishness, misplaced 
eagerness, want of confidence, and blameworthy curiosity. 
He said to them in a tone of reproach : “ Except ye see signs 
and wonders, ye will not believe .” 3 However, because of the 
renown which preceded him, he was received with favour 
by the Galilaeans. 

The little caravan separated ; the disciples went each one 
to his own home, some to Cana, others to Bethsaida and 
Capernaum. He does not himself appear to have gone back 
to Nazareth ; he avoided it, as at his first return, from motives 
of which we are ignorant, and went to Cana, where his mother 
seems to have been still living with relations or friends. 


1 John iv. 44; cf. Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4 ; Luke iv. 24. 

2 John iv. 45. 

3 John iv. 48. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 223 


The disciples in their dispersal spread the news of the 
arrival of Jesus throughout the provinces and in the town of 
Capernaum in particular, where Peter lived. A miracle 
increased the glory of the Galilaean prophet and brought his 
name to the notice of Herod Antipas : 1 “ And there was a 

certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When 
he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he 
went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, 
and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.” Messages, 
visits, and embassies, in the East, are always attended with a 
certain pomp ; the great person who waited on Jesus must 
have had an escort, with which he entered the Prophet’s 
house. Jesus did not at first appear to listen to his prayer. 
He knew well that it was not the Messiah whom the nobleman 
sought in him, but the miracle-worker, and the healer of 
material need. Such a faith did not move him much. With¬ 
out first looking to the grief of the suppliant father, but as the 
Saviour, always more careful to heal the soul than the body, 
he said : What feeble faith is yours, “ except ye see signs and 
wonders, ye will not believe.” This tone increased the father’s 
grief. “ The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere 
my child die. Jesus was touched with compassion, and saith 
unto him, Go thy way ; thy son liveth. And the man believed 
the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his 
way.” The words of Jesus always sank deeply into the soul. 

We see here, in a striking manner, with what art he was 
able to gain entire confidence. He loved those simple souls, 
which, even before they had seen his miracles, came to him 
freely, and believed in him with their first faith ; and on this 
condition he gave play to his divine power. In order to gain 
the confidence of this counsellor of Herod he declared to him 
that his son was healed, and he, before having ascertained it, 
without hesitation and without reserve, believed what Jesus 

1 John iv. 47, etc. 


224 


JESUS CHRIST. 


said ; he yielded entire faith and went his way. “ And as he 
was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, 
saying, Thy son liveth. Then enquired he of them the hour 
when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday 
at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew 
that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, 
Thy son liveth." The whole family of this officer of Herod 
believed in the new prophet; the miracle must have made 
considerable stir ; that which passes among the crowd does 
not always reach the ears of the great, and is lost in obscurity, 
but that which affects the great has its part in the con¬ 
sideration and respect which surround them. 

Healing at a distance is a human impossibility, but a 
divine fact . 1 A man who judges history by what he knows 
of ascertained forces rejects it, but whoever judges according 
to the measure of God, receives it as a witness to his infinite 
power. The first restricts and mutilates it, the second, 
effacing himself before almighty and overruling power, 
increases it. This miracle was only the first of those which 
Jesus was to work in the land of Galilee when he came to fix 


i This miracle, which supposes in the miracle-worker a superhuman 
knowledge and power, has, naturally, been rejected by the rationalistic 
school, like all other facts of the same kind. Denial is easy, but denial 
does not explain the narrative which the documents have preserved for 
us. The mythical theory of Strauss has been able to find nothing likely 
to give body to this legend by any analogous story in the old Testament. 
It has recalled in this connection that Elijah healed at a distance, and 
without leaving his house, a certain Naaman, a leper, ordering him to go 
and plunge seven times in the Jordan. This is to abuse the simplicity of 
the reader, and ask of him more faith than the miracle itself means. 

Weisse has wished to see a parable in this narrative, but the 
documents are entirely against it. Nothing can legitimate such an 
interpretation. What is true in it is that the fact narrated is a typical 
character, like all the other facts in the Gospels. The Gentile at 
Capernaum is the image of the world of Gentiles, who not having seen 
Christ as the Jews saw him, yet felt the sovereign action of his divine 
power. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 225 

his abode there; and just as that of Cana was wrought with 
reserve and mystery, so in the same measure was the healing 
of this son of this officer of Antipas accomplished with 
acclaim. It was, in fact, necessary that opinion should be 
prepared, little by little, for the influence which Jesus was to 
exercise upon it. Nothing contributed more decidedly to this 
end than these divine works in which the close and absolute 
union between Jesus and his Father was shown. He promised 
the impossible, in the human sense of the word, and he 
realised the impossible, for those who, after the example of 
the man at Capernaum, believed in his word. 

The sojourn of Jesus in Galilee on this second journey 
was prolonged from the month of December, 781, to a feast 
of which the fourth evangelist does not give the name, but 
which was probably that of Purim or Lots, 1 celebrated in the 
month of Adar, corresponding to our month of F'ebruary, two 
months before the Passover. Jesus, whose centre of activity 
was still at Jerusalem and in Judaea, went on the occasion of 
this solemnity to the Holy City. We are absolutely ignorant 
of the details of his ministry before this journey; but it is 
probable that he then visited more than once his disciples of 
Bethsaida and Capernaum, and revealed himself by more than 
one sign, but this is a blank page, which in default of docu¬ 
ments we may not fill with hypotheses. Neither do we know 
who went with him to Jerusalem. All that can be said, accord¬ 
ing to the testimony of St. John, 2 is that this arrival of Jesus 
in the Holy City was of decisive importance in the develop¬ 
ment of his mission. 

1 See Appendix A, General Chronology of the Life of fesus ; II. In¬ 
auguration of the Public Mijiistry in Galilee. 

u John v. 


CHAPTER VII. 


JESUS THE SON OF GOD. 

The first stay of Jesus at Jerusalem and his apostleship 
in Judaea had produced considerable results. They had 
pointed him out to the whole nation, to the people and the 
hierarchy, to those who were indifferent to the Law, and to 
the fanatical for it, to the unlettered and to the wise. The 
multitude, in general, struck by his miracles, held him for a 
prophet; and many, even among those who studied the 
Scriptures, like Nicodemus, could not refuse to see in him a 
messenger of God and a Master. 

It is, however, to be remarked that the name of Messiah 
was not pronounced in the tumult of the crowd; the aspect 
of the Galilaean workman hardly answered to the dreams of 
popular imagination nor to the prejudices of Pharisaic learn¬ 
ing. Jesus, moreover, carefully avoided every word and act 
which could excite the one or flatter the other party. The 
vigorous step which he had taken in the Temple by the 
expulsion of the traffickers disclosed the spiritual reformer 
consumed by the zeal of God. He was not only like the 
Baptist, a voice in the desert appealing to the conscience, but 
an authority which intervened in the very organisation of the 
theocracy. The rulers were conscious of this from the first, 
and with that instinct which hardly ever deceives those who 
feel themselves threatened, they recognised in Jesus a power 
which they must break or suppress. But the craft and 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 227 

violence of man, his short-lived science and his ephemeral 
power, his plots and his destructions, have never succeeded in 
hindering that which ought to be. 

In this first encounter with the religious rulers, Jesus had 
not yet revealed himself; he took an attitude, the firmness of 
which surprised, and the holy audacity stupefied them ; strong 
in a righteous deed, which recommended itself by the purest 
sentiment of religion and justice, he disdained to abate his 
titles, and retired, avoiding the crowd which he distrusted, illu¬ 
minating willing minds, leaving the priests astonished, confused 
and threatening. Ten months later he reappeared at Jerusalem. 

Although a certain reserve still characterized the public 
action of Jesus, yet his influence spread far and wide. If ever 
his enemies had thought that they could set him aside, his 
increasing ascendency would soon have scattered this illusion. 
The moment had come to declare what he was, to explain 
his divine mission to his adversaries themselves, to prove his 
right in face of religious authority; Jesus was now to declare 
the full greatness of his religious career. The occasion was a 
miracle of which it is important to know the detailed narrative, 1 
for it was these details, brought into light with much bitter¬ 
ness by the Pharisees, which occasioned a new collision 
between Jesus and the chiefs of the nation. 

There was at Jerusalem, near the sheep market, a Pool, 2 
surrounded by five porches, called by the Jews Bethesda, 3 a 
kind of hospital which, during the day, was a shelter to the 
sick against the wind, sun, and rain. There lay a multitude 
of sick folk, blind and halt, or with withered limbs. A 
supernatural virtue was attributed to the water in the Pool; it 
was from time to time agitated by a mysterious power, and 

1 John v. 

2 See Appendix E, The Pool of Bethesda . 

» Beth-Hesda. House of Charity. 


228 


JESUS CHRIST. 


whoever first entered in, after the moving of the water, rose 
from it sound and whole whatever his infirmities. 

Now in the midst of these unfortunate people there was a 
man who had been paralysed for thirty-eight years. “ When 
Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long 
time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made 
whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no 
man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but 
while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus 
saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And 
immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, 
and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. The 
Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the 
sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He 
answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto 
me, Take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, 
What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and 
walk ? And he that was healed wist not who it was : for 
Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that 
place. Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said 
unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a 
worse thing come unto thee.” 

Organic disorder is more than a symbol. It may even be 
an effect of moral disorder, for sicknesses are often caused by 
sin. Vice which troubles the soul begets a thousand infir¬ 
mities which assail the functions of life, upsetting them or 
staying their course, aggravating or paralysing them. 
Physical pain thus becomes the chastisement of God. He 
whose conscience accuses him, said the wise men of Israel, 
falls into the hands of the physician. 1 The sick man healed 
by Jesus was, no doubt, one of these sinners ; and Jesus 
reminded him of it. After having given him help he desired 


1 Eccles. xxviii. io. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 229 

to awaken, to elevate, and purify his conscience ; for his divine 
power only touched the body in order to gain and save the 
soul. As soon as the paralytic recognised his benefactor he, 
out of gratitude, began to publish abroad the name of Jesus, 
without thinking that in revealing to the Pharisees him from 
whom he had gained his health he might exasperate their 
envious hatred. It was, in fact, the occasion of new perse¬ 
cution, which marked the second appearance of the Prophet 
at Jerusalem. 

They sought for and followed him ; nor did he then 
conceal himself, for he had begun the destined strife against 
his enemies, which was thenceforward to continue till his 
death ; he endeavoured to convince them, and, if he could not 
succeed, was to end by confounding them. He passed his 
days in the Temple, conversing, teaching, and multiplying his 
miracles. His name was no longer a mystery ; his presence 
stirred the people more and more, which is not wont to discuss 
nor reason, and submits instinctively to the charm of every 
character which has the power to captivate their imagination. 
No man had ever so profoundly impressed the crowd as Jesus, 
and therein we must seek the first cause of the natural anti¬ 
pathy which he encountered in the Jewish aristocracy. They 
would have let him be and his doctrine pass unheeded ; they 
would have confounded him, in their insolent disdain, with the 
crowd of publicans and sinners ; but he worked and drew men 
to him ; therein was his crime. 

When men in authority are menaced by one of superior 
powers, it is his influence that they seek to combat, and they 
seize on any mere pretext. Everything, moreover, in Jesus 
angered the rulers of the people and the masters, disturbed 
their prejudices, assailed their pretensions of national pride or 
intolerant piety : his Galilaean origin, his humble birth, the 
boldness of his deeds, his disdain for all the traditions of the 
Pharisees, the originality of a doctrine and language unlearnt 
from any master, and dependent upon no human authority. 


2 30 


JESUS CHRIST. 


In its secret wisdom, Providence had seen good to leave Jesus 
bare of all those qualities which, humanly speaking, availed to 
conciliate public opinion. Even when he manifested himself 
by word or act, some detail in one or other was almost sure 
to wound the sectarian customs or doctrines of one or the 
other party; thus he illuminated and blinded at once, caused 
edification and scandal. Upright hearts recognised him, 
prejudiced minds rejected him ; he above all others was the 
Being who hideth himself, as is proved by his whole life. 

He was of the blood-royal of David, but his family had 
fallen in rank ; he was born at Bethlehem, but passed for a 
Nazarene ; he spoke as no master ever spoke, but he had no 
licence to teach; he multiplied the signs of his power, but 
they were not those which the Jews demanded ; he healed, 
but often on the Sabbath day; he called himself Messiah, but 
without playing that earthly part which the doctors demanded ; 
he insisted on his divine sonship with an increasing force of 
affirmation, equalling himself to God, but it was precisely that 
divine filiation which offended the religious chiefs, and was 
for them the greatest of blasphemies ; he founded the King¬ 
dom of God and promulgated its law, but this kingdom and 
law were the end of the Jewish law and power; Moses had 
passed away, and Israel must change or die. 

When they learned the healing of the paralytic man at the 
Pool of Bethesda, the Jewish authorities did not even think of 
wondering at its marvellous side. Like all prejudiced, 
narrow, and ill-conditioned minds, they took hold of the 
detail which displeased them and resented it, wounded in 
their empty religion. That Jesus cured the paralytic with a 
word was nothing to them ; that he had healed on the 
Sabbath day and ordered a man to carry his bed, despising 
the Sabbath law of rest, was a scandal. Their arbitrary rules 
and human traditions, their scholastic decisions, and miserable 
casuistry, were essential; whoever would not bend himself 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 231 

under this yoke was blameworthy, a sinner, and a revolution¬ 
ary, who must be reprimanded and persecuted. Nothing is 
more inexorable or more irritable than minds given over tc 
this kind of religious aberration; the man who loves God and 
worships in truth is gentle, but he who loves himself under the 
cover of religion is always bitter and violent. True piety is 
courteous, false piety is hypocritical and ill-natured. The 
great majority of the members of the hierarchy, Sadducees and 
Pharisees alike, had strangely perverted the Mosaic Law; and 
this inveterate perversion, blinding and debasing them, must 
have closed their minds to the truth, and inspired in them, 
against Jesus, a repulsion and violence which nothing could 
conquer. 

Jesus was therefore accused by the Pharisees of violating 
the Sabbath. 1 It is possible that this accusation was a judicial 
act, and that he had to appear before the tribunal charged 
with judging crimes against religion. Perhaps, however, the 
intervention of the Sanhedrin did not go to such a length, 
and some members were told off only to reproach Jesus for 
his misunderstanding of the Law. In either case the answer 
of Jesus must be closely studied, in the summary which the 
fourth Gospel has preserved for us; he took the occasion 
offered him to declare clearly and solemnly what he was, to 
show to the Sanhedrin and its emissaries wherein his religious 
work consisted, and to declare those undeniable rights on 
which he founded his public action. 

The reproach addressed to Jesus did not in any degree rest 
upon the Law of Moses. It could only be founded on arbitrary 
rules, and the most childish subtlety, of which the scribes and 
doctors were overfull; but these scrupulous rules were more 
to them than the Law itself; foolish accessories made them 

1 The term c&lo>kov, which the Vulgate has translated by the expression 
persequebantur , may be interpreted in the sense of bringing to justice. 


232 


JESUS CHRIST. 


forget the essentials; their mean ideas took the place of the 
Word of God. Blinded by the letter, strangers to the spirit, 
they stifled the Word instead of understanding it. One of 
these strange rules was precisely that which forbade the carry¬ 
ing of even the most trifling object from one place to another 
on the Sabbath day, without the most urgent necessity. 1 

Jesus, in order to justify himself, disdained in such circum¬ 
stances to point out to his accusers the vanity and nothingness 
of their customs and ordinances : he had a higher right to 
declare; he did not appeal from these Pharisaic subtleties to 
the pure Law of Moses, nor claim the inalienable liberty of 
doing good with which no human precepts could interfere; 
he did not discuss, but affirmed, invoking as his own the 
right of God and the example of his Father; and in the full 
consciousness of his divine sonship, he said to them : “ My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” 

God knows no rest, he is activity itself; his power never 
fails, by him all things are, in him they live and move; the 
cessation of his influence would be the annihilation of every 
creature whom his ever active word bears, 2 nourishes, develops 
and attracts. 

Man’s freedom is controlled by his conscience and his 
uncertain reason, which dictate and codify laws for him. 
The life of Jesus was only ruled by the will and example of 
his Father ; he had heard and seen him ; his human actions 
were only the execution of this ineffable will, and the imitation 
of this eternal example. What his Father willed, he willed ; 
what his Father did, he did : as no human authority can weaken 
the authority of God, so none can weaken his authority ; his 
right of action is equal to that of God. The Father works 
without ceasing for the salvation of mankind ; this work is 
constant and progressive as his love, and experiences no 
cessation nor truce. 

1 Talmud, Schabbat , fol. 6, i. 

2 Hebrews i. 3. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 233 

And I, said Jesus, work as God. No sabbath can suspend 
the tendency of every creature towards God. Such an 
answer plainly affirmed the divinity of the Messiah and the 
Messiahship of Jesus. 

These two truths, which sum up the whole Gospel, form 
the base of the Master’s work, they are seen in all his 
discourses, and explain his whole life, the hostility and 
hatred which he excited, the tragic end of his career, and the 
extraordinary influence which he has exercised above all 
since his death. 

The Jewish doctors and the members of the priesthood 
were obstinate in denying both. Forgetting the constant 
doctrine of the prophets, leaving on one side their sublimest 
teaching, absorbed by ceremonial and legal questions, led 
astray by their political and national prejudices, declaring 
only the unity of God of which they did not know the 
mystery, they, for the most part, never chose to recognise the 
first right of Messiah, the right which alone could explain his 
function. They gave him all his privileges: the general 
judgment, the salvation and regeneration of the world, the 
foundation of the Kingdom of God, victory over all his 
enemies, an eternal throne at the right hand of God, association 
with his power and glory; but they obstinately refused to 
him his divinity, and in their daily prayers they ceased not to 
say: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord,” inter¬ 
preting this formula in an Unitarian sense which excluded a 
true sonship in God. 

However, more than one teacher avoided this perversion of 
Messianic ideas, and was careful not to oppose the holy unity 
of Jehovah to the divinity of the Messiah. The authors of the 
apocryphal and Sibylline books certainly did not share these 
scholastic errors ; the formal witness of John the Baptist to 
the divine sonship of Christ did not remain without an echo. 

Now, the title of the Son of God is precisely the only one 


234 


JESUS CHRIST. 


which Jesus claimed as Messiah; and such was the violence 
of the prejudices held by the scribes, doctors, and priests, 
that he necessarily gave scandal to them and excited the 
whole hatred of their religious faith. Jesus would in no 
degree minimise the matter, but was to declare what he is 
without equivocation or disguise, and, each time that he had 
before him the representatives of learning and authority, was 
to speak to them without parables, in perfectly clear terms 
which no sophistry could veil; nor was he to wait for 
occasions, but to make them. Thus it was that when 
speaking of the Pharisaic observance of the Sabbath, he 
affirmed his divine sonship, and explicitly declared that he 
was the equal of God. This was the first solemn assertion 
which we meet with in his life. 

The emissaries of the Sanhedrin were shocked and scan¬ 
dalised, and complained that he not only broke the Sabbath, 
but he dared to call God his Father, thus making himself 
equal to God. 1 From that moment Jesus seemed to them a 
blasphemer whom they must seek to kill; and he heard 
around him murmured threats of death. But he, who never 
feared to throw himself against prejudices, did not allow 
himself to be intimidated by the hatred which these teachings 
might let loose on him. For him the will of the Father was 
all; death was of no account if this will called him to die ; he 
came into the world only to bear witness of the truth. 

His words grew more solemn and more decided ; far from 
weakening this equality with God, advanced against him as 
blasphemy, he explained it, and gave it its full force. 

The type and guiding law of his actions was nothing 
created and nothing human, but God himself, the influence 
of the Father. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can 
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for 

1 John v. 18. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 235 

what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son like¬ 
wise.” 

Man cannot see God, nor by himself rise so far as to take 
God for the model of his life ; but the Father loveth the Son : 
the same spirit of love constitutes the ineffable tie between 
them, and the Father reveals to the Son all that he does; 
between them there is the same light and the same infinite 
power, equality is perfect, union absolute; that is the whole 
secret of the nature and functions of the Messiah. The works 
which the Son has done with the Father, he said, are but 
little ; he will do greater works than these, at which ye shall 
marvel. Jesus thus declared his Messianic destiny; he taught 
no mere dogma, but he affirmed facts in the divine order; he 
did not speak abstract language like a doctor, but revealed 
his consciousness and bore witness of what he saw and what 
he was. He added: “ For the Father judgeth no man, but 
hath committed all judgment unto the Son : that all men 
should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He 
that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which 
hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth 
my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting 
life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed 
from death unto life.” 

All his Messianic character is in this work of life. The 
prophets had already spoken of it, in hidden words which the 
doctors could not ignore. The field of dry bones seen by 
Ezekiel, was mankind lying dead . 1 The voice of God saying 
to these dry bones, “ I will send my spirit upon you, and ye 
shall live,” was the voice of the Son of Man, the Messiah. 
When Isaiah exclaimed : “ Thy dead men shall live, together 
with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that 
dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth 
shall cast out the dead.” 2 Isaiah saw the great era of Christ. 

1 Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-14. 

2 Isaiah xxvi. 19, etc. 

22 


236 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Even the rabbis understood this. They taught that the Gentiles 
had not life , 1 and the dry bones were the sons of men who had 
not received the dew of the Law. In thus affirming his mission 
before the scribes in Jerusalem, Jesus did not speak to them 
a language hitherto unheard ; he did no more than open the 
book of which they thought they had the key, and of which 
their blind learning could not guess the deep meaning. 

His affirmation became stronger and more earnest as he 
spoke; but his auditors continually grew more obstinate. 
You look for the resurrection of the dead foretold by the 
prophets, at the advent of Messiah. “ Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. 
Marvel not at this.” This is but the first hour, the first 
resurrection, that of souls dead in trespasses and of manhood 
withered as dry bones ; but there shall be a second resurrec¬ 
tion. “ For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in 
the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” 

In distinguishing the two extreme points of his work, 
Jesus gave it all its greatness, he allowed it to be seen that 
this greatness included all both on this and on the other side 
of the tomb, and he cleared the confusion made by many 
people between the two resurrections, the one moral and 
mysterious, hidden in the depth of the soul; the other 
material, startling and decisive, to take place before the whole 
world. The former was already transacting itself under the 
word of Jesus, the Son of God concealed in the unknown Son 
of Man ; the second was still future, full of hope and terror, 
rejoicing those who had not rejected the voice of the Messiah, 
terrible to those who should continue obstinate to his appeal. 

In order the better to understand these conversations, we 
must get rid of the prejudice that the documents which 
contained them are shorthand notes, and we must accustom 


1 Ketubb., fol. 3, 2. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 237 

ourselves to treat them as scattered and condensed recol¬ 
lections. 

The thought of Jesus on the divinity of the Messiah, 
on his universality and work, was always and everywhere 
identical ; the form varied according to circumstances, but 
the basis remained the same. Whether he formulated his 
doctrines in an intimate conversation with Nicodemus, a 
learned Pharisee, or with an unlettered woman in Samaria ; or 
whether he was exposed to a hostile party like those who 
here accused him, we shall find him always with these essential 
notes : divinity of person and divinity of functions : man is 
powerless to play a part which can belong to God alone. 

Christ is the source of life, not that material life which 
passes away, earthly and intellectual, such a life is compared 
to the shadow of death, but a spiritual and eternal, heavenly 
and divine life ; to spring from him, like a torrent inundating 
mankind; to receive it we must listen to his word ; whoso¬ 
ever shall believe on the Son of God will pass from death 
unto life, and whoever will remain deaf to his appeal will 
never arise from the dead. 

Thus stripped of all element of Judaism, the work of 
Alessiah answered to all that the prophets had announced, 
and appeared in its pure beauty and eternal grandeur ; it did 
not flatter the prejudices of a nation deprived of sight, but 
found an echo in the conscience of man and in his highest 
aspirations. 

Man knows that he is in moral misery and death, but in 
the depth of his nature, overwhelmed by evil, he keeps the 
instinct of his divine destiny; he is hungry and thirsty for a 
life which shall fulfil his vast desire for truth, perfection, and 
eternity, and it is to him that the Son of God speaks in order 
to raise him and give him life. 

In spite of their Unitarian superstition, their malevolence 
and their hatred of opposition, their pride of power and 
haughty pretensions, Jesus made the Jews listen to him ; he 


238 


JESUS CHRIST. 


constrained, I do not say their admiration, but at least their 
silence and attention. The most obstinate men are subdued 
by the power of the human word when it is at the service of 
truth and virtue ; the divine words of Jesus had an irresistible 
ascendency ; they impressed and charmed, overthrew and 
raised again, held anger and hatred in suspense, overruled the 
crowd and astonished those who thought that they knew ; met 
every concealed objection, divined the inmost thoughts of 
those who spoke to him ; it was the two-edged sword which 
pierced even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of 
the joints and marrow . 1 

Every Jew trembled when he heard of the Messiah; no 
doctor, no prophet had ever spoken of him like Jesus : he 
lifted every veil, removed every figure, showed truth without 
shadow and without reticence, in its bare simplicity, retaining 
only the mystery of its depth. 

When Jesus set forth to the Jews who had come to accuse 
liim, the divinity of the Son of God, his equality with the 
Father, and the greatness of his Messianic work, he felt that, 
even if they accepted the doctrine, they would indignantly 
reject the idea that he was the man who should embody it. 
The doctrine would run counter to their prejudices, and 
offend their strict ideas, but his person was a scandal to them : 
the one wounded their opinions, but the other humiliated their 
self-love. They could not think it possible that a Galilaean, an 
unknown man of the people, and a sinner, should be the 
Messiah of the nation. Nothing is more difficult to oppose 
than the wounded pride of a class or a people ; opinions are 
often subject to modification and compromise, but wounded 
pride blinds the spirit and shuts the heart; it is obstinate and 
unforgiving. Jesus, during his whole life, found this obstacle 
in his path : he encountered it here in all its violence, and in 
order to remove it he declared his claim. 


1 Hebrews iv. 12. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 239 


The declaration alone was sufficient for simple souls who 
allowed themselves to be drawn towards the light, and who, 
welcoming all truth, soon tasted its sweetness in their heart; 
but for those prejudiced minds who resisted, disputed, and 
narrowed themselves to the compass of their own theories, 
it raised the scornful objection that whosoever gave witness of 
himself had no right to be believed; justice needs the wit¬ 
ness of a third party, and reason demands proofs. 

Jesus, unyielding before the hostility and malevolence 
of his adversaries, answered that in judging himself, he was 
not among those whom personal ambition or self-will con¬ 
strained to play a part and undertake a mission. 

“ I can of mine own self do nothing : as I hear, I judge : 
and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, 
but the will of the Father which hath sent me. If I bear wit¬ 
ness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that 
beareth witness of me ; and I know that the witness which he 
witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare 
witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from 
man : but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He 
was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a 
season to rejoice in his light. But I have greater witness than 
that of John : for the works which the Father hath given me 
to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that 
the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself, which hath 
sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye hath neither heard 
his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not 
his word abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye 
believe not. Search the scriptures ; for in them ye think ye 
have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 
And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” 

The argument was logical and admitted of no reply. It 
adduced all which could convince the most faithful and 


240 


JESUS CHRIST. 


enlightened, even the most tenacious and exacting Jew : the 
prophetic authority of John, who was yet living, and whose 
independence and virtue none could impugn, the striking 
signs by which Jesus affirmed and justified the fact that the 
power of God was in him ; and lastly the Scriptures, the Book 
of the Law, the rule of thought and life, which was for all 
Israel the eternal and infallible word. 

Though armed with all these witnesses, Jesus did not suc¬ 
ceed in conquering and persuading the obstinacy of the doctors; 
they rejected John, whose severe words had scourged them ; 
they did not deny the miracles of Jesus, but attributed 
them to the power of evil; they did not reject the Scrip¬ 
tures, but refused to understand them, using them merely to 
justify their faults, and consecrate their material religion. 
Nothing can subdue the man who asserts his freedom of will, 
and trusts in his own power ; he has the terrible privilege of 
defying truth, reason, evidence, the appeals of goodness, the 
entreaties of love, the charm of beauty, and even God himself. 

The invincible obstinacy against which Jesus contended 
was decreed in the designs of the Father and in his own 
destiny. He experienced it this time in its bitter reality; 
and whoever, in whatever degree, has this experience, learns 
that one of the greatest sorrows of life is the sight of a 
hardened man, rejecting truth and fortifying himself within 
the circle of his errors and miseries. 

With a sadness mingled of gentleness and threats, Jesus 
spoke these last words to the messengers of the Sanhedrin: 
“ I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that ye 
have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s 
name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own 
name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive 
honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh 
from God only ? Do not think that I will accuse you to the 
Father : there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom 
ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 241 

me : for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writmgs, 
how shall ye believe my words ? ” On these eyes so firmly 
closed, Jesus allowed a last ray of light to shine; he clearly 
recalled the two Messianic passages in Moses, the prophecy 
of Jacob denoting the time when Messiah should appear, the 
time at which the secptre should depart from Judah , 1 and the 
prophecies of Moses himself, concerning the distant coming of 
the great prophet like unto him, and threatening that those 
who did not listen to him should be cut off from the people . 2 

Jesus, without being disquieted, withdrew himself from his 
judges and abandoned them to their blindness, knowing that 
he had everything to dread from their hatred. 

The mystery of human incredulity was unveiled in the end 
of this discourse, and is prolonged throughout the ages, just 
as it showed itself under Solomon’s Porch. The Gospel history 
has not, like human history, any fresh starting-points, but as 
it continues it is always identical with itself, unchanged in a 
world of change and death. The Son of God appears greater 
than all things, welcomed by the witness of great minds who 
confess him, virtuous men who adore him; his life-giving 
works accompany him, attesting the power with which he was 
filled; and the Scriptures, which spoke of him before his birth, 
remain an open book where alone amongst men he shows 
himself the Desired of all the ages. Great men, leaders and 
masters of thought, shut their minds, like the Pharisees, to 
these luminous titles. They disdain and accuse the sole Being 
sent to give that eternal life for which the human soul hungers. 

And this because they love not God, nor truth, nor good¬ 
ness, but love themselves alone; obstinacy of spirit has its 
root in self-love : he who loves himself sees himself alone and 
prefers all that flatters him to God ; he is his own god and 
rejects all that is not he accepts only what conforms to his 
theories and interests. 

1 Genesis xlix. 10. 

2 Deut. xviii. 1518. 


242 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Strange that all these are egoists united to each other by 
the bonds of mutual flattery, and call each other hypocritically 
master and lord, but each one believes himself to be master 
and lord. They all have their Moses ; to-day it is called 
science and pure reason ; but, like the Jewish parties, each 
interprets it at his own will, nor chooses to see that science 
and pure reason, each after its own fashion, bear witness, 
like Moses, to the Son of God, who alone says the last word 
on that origin of things which science is powerless to explain, 
and the last word on things to come, about which pure reason 
has always been uncertain. 

This phase of the life of Jesus between the first calling 
of a few of the disciples and this second journey to Jerusalem, 
shows forth the hero and opens his active ministry. The 
manifestation was overwhelming, the beginning decisive. 

Jesus declared himself the Son of God, and began his 
ministry at Jerusalem itself, in the face of the people and the 
authorities ; Jerusalem was itself the nation, the centre from 
which emanated two powers which were obeyed ; public 
opinion and authority. It was known what he was and 
what he desired ; wherever he should bend his steps hence¬ 
forward, the eyes of the people and their rulers would be upon 
him. 

The effect was gained ; from the north to the south, from 
Hermon to the confines of Idumaea, from the west to the east, 
from the Mediterranean to the vast plains of the Arab kingdom 
of Aretas, Palestine was aware that a great prophet had arisen, 
calling himself the Son of God, proving his mission by miracles, 
and claiming faith in his word. It was not ignorant that men’s 
minds were divided in regard to him ; that he attracted the 
crowd, but that the rulers of the people, with few exceptions, 
the doctors and the elders, the aristocracy of fortune, of the 
priesthood and of learning, the high priests and the Sanhedrin, 
were in open opposition to him. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 243 

They regarded him as a false prophet, an impious blas¬ 
phemer ; they watched him and followed his steps, and, fearing 
that the crowd, led astray by him, should escape from their 
authority, they were resolved to persecute Jesus, and treat him 
with all the rigour of their law directed against those who led 
the people astray and blasphemed Jehovah. 

Thus at Jerusalem Jesus had only succeeded in gathering 
round him from among the multitude a few simple and upright 
souls, in creating among the upper classes a few unknown and 
secret friends, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and 
in provoking in the official world, the guardian of traditions 
and laws, an invincible and menacing antagonism. 

The enmity of the priesthood against Jesus from the very 
first hour might have hindered, paralysed, and indeed anni¬ 
hilated his action ; but God restrained the power of evil, and 
mastered its impetuous hatred. On the other hand, Jesus knew 
the exact measure of the opposition he might excite, without 
prejudice to his work, and, as his hour was not yet come, he had 
the wisdom to flee from danger when the danger became too 
pressing. 

In this wisdom we must seek the historic motive for his 
abandonment of Judaea and the chief city, and for seeking in 
Galilee more quiet and hospitable surroundings, which allowed 
him to found the work of his Kingdom. This was the 
promised land; since Judaea rejected him, he retired from 
her, realizing one of those prophecies which six centuries 
before had already described his life :— 

“ Nevertheless,” said the seer, “ the dimness shall not be such 
as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted 
the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward 
did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond 
Jordan, in Galilee of the nations . 1 The people that walled 
in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the 


1 The Sea of Galilee. 


244 JESUS CHRIST. 

land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light 
shined .” 1 

An important religious event, which produced a profound 
emotion in the Jewish nation, warned Jesus that the time had 
come to allow his influence to be widely felt. God takes to 
himself those whom he sends. The facts of their life, the 
incidents which surround them, the part that they have to play, 
are all in harmony ; all that happens to them comes from that 
invisible hand which orders everything ; and the intended 
work is often accomplished in spite of, and unknown to, those 
who desire to stifle it. 

John had been thrown into prison ; 2 this bold and indomit¬ 
able prophet, this penitent, hungering after righteousness and 
full of reproaches against the vices of his countrymen, he who 
laid bare all hypocrisy and had spared none in his holy wrath, 
had not hesitated to denounce the sins of a prince. His 
voice, which the presence of Jesus had rendered gentle, found 
all its vehemence to blame and condemn the conduct of Herod 
Antipas. The tetrarch, following the impious example of his 
father, had put away his wife, the daughter of Aretas, king of 
Arabia, to marry a princess of his own blood, Herodias, the 
wife of his brother, Herod Philip. This adulterous union 
shocked every true Jew: John was the avenger of the outraged 
conscience of the nation ; he reproached Herod with his crime 
in the name of God. 

The tetrarch might perhaps have accepted in silence the 
humiliation which the prophet inflicted upon him ; he was a 
man of timid character and undecided mind ; but Herodias 
could not brook the insult. This imperious woman had not 
much trouble to make the man in whom she had inspired a 
blind passion, the instrument of her hatred. As always, a 


1 Isaiah ix. i, 2. 

2 Antiq. xviii. 5, 2; Matt. xiv. 2; Mark vi. 14 ; Luke iii. 19. 


JOHN THE FORERUNNER AND COMING OF JESUS. 245 

pretext was made of the necessity of looking after public 
order: it was pretended that there was a danger in the crowds 
drawn by John, and his arrest was decided. It was necessary 
to silence his burning words. The soldiers of Herod received 
the order to seize John and carry him off to the frontiers of 
Peraea and Arabia, to the fortress of Machaerus in the steep 
and solitary mountains of Moab. 

When his task is finished, the man of God disappears, 
leaving an open field to his successors ; the task of John was 
done, the ways were open and souls awakened ; the harbinger 
might be silent, Christ was to speak and work. 









BOOK III. 

THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM 
OF GOD. 





CHAPTER I. 


GALILEE AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

On the news that the Baptist was cast into prison, Jesus 
quitted Judaea and retired to Galilee , 1 in the power of the 
Spirit, in order to preach there the Gospel of the Kingdom of 
God . 2 Jewish tradition, dating from the Babylonian exile, 
divided the land of Israel into three parts : Judaea ; the parts 
beyond Jordan, or Peraea ; and Galilee . 3 Samaria was ex¬ 
cluded ; the orthodox teachers refusing it the privilege 
attached to the sacred soil. They did not, however, confound 
it with the Gentile territory. Its streams, its dwellings, its 
paths, they said in their formal science, did not defile the 
strict and faithful Jew . 4 

In the time of Jesus, this division was consecrated by 
popular language and opinion ; 5 the land of Judah eclipsed 
all the others. While Galilee bore the humiliating name of the 
“ land of the Gentiles,” Judaea remained the Holy Land, privi¬ 
leged above all others. It was the seat of the chief city, the 
Temple, and the government, and it was the political, national, 
and religious centre. Galilee and Peraea, the countries on either 
side of the Jordan, formed, after the death of Herod, a tetrarchy 

1 See Appendix A, General Chronology of the Life of fesus. I. In¬ 
auguration of the Public Ministry in Galilee. 

2 Matt. iv. 12 ; Mark i. 14; Luke iv. 14. 

3 Sheviithy c. 9, 2. 

4 Talmud, Hierosol ., Avoda Zara , f. 44. 

5 Matt. x. 5; Mark iii. 7. 


250 


JESUS CHRIST. 


governed by one of his sons, Antipas. Galilee, properly so- 
called, is that part of Palestine the most renowned for fertility 
of soil and variety of scene. The territory of Tyre and 
Sidon, the blue chain of Carmel, form its limit on the west, 
Samaria on the south; on the north it extends as far as the 
river Leontes and the chain of Anti-Libanus; on the east it 
is bounded by the Upper Jordan, the Lake of Gennesareth, 
and the territories of Gadara, Hippos, and Scythopolis. All 
the beauties of nature are united in this little spot of earth, 
whose superficies is only from 90 to 100 square miles ; it has 
elevated plateaux, plains, hills and high mountains, wild gorges 
and fresh valleys, springs without number, a sacred river, and 
a little inland sea. 

Josephus calls it a great wheatfield. 1 Forests of oak and 
pine clothed its mountains ; olive woods alternated with vast 
meadows and cultivated fields ; numerous country houses 
spread themselves on the shores of the lake under the palms, 
and lay upon the hills in the midst of fig trees, olives, and 
vines. The great commercial roads, which link the principal 
towns of the coast, Ptolemais, Tyre and Sidon, to Damascus 
and Mesopotamia passed through Galilee and gave to it much 
animation. The traveller who explores the country at present, 
cannot resist a feeling of sadness when he sees it depopulated 
and in ruins. 

The strong Galilaean race has disappeared. What was 
Peraea beyond Jordon from Machaerus as far as Pella and 
Gadara, is only a vast solitude where the Arabs encamp 
under their tents, graze their flocks, and reap wheat and 
barley. Inner and Upper Galilee are inhabited by indolent 
fellahs, who till the ground, and sow the bottom of the valleys 
and those hillsides which rains and torrents have not rendered 
desert. Forests no longer clothe the mountains ; there are 
no towns nor fortresses, no monuments nor palaces. The 


1 Cf. Afitiq. xiii. 2, 3; Bell. Jud. iii. 3, 1. 



The town of Tiberias in the distance. 





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 251 

villages are only masses of miserable square houses, ordinarily 
built on some little knoll, each grouped round the mosque and 
its minaret. 

The springs and rivulets, instead of enriching the land, 
render it marshy, or lay it waste. The lake of Gennesareth 
is desolate ; the towns, which once crowded its shores, are heaps 
of half-buried ruins. Tiberias, Tarichaea, Hippos, Gadara, 
Gerasa, Julias, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Magdala, have slept for 
centuries. Anyone seeing their ruins, half concealed in the 
tall herbage ; crumbling walls, mutilated columns, thresholds, 
broken gates, bricks and vases in the dust; would say that 
they were the bones and ashes of a people reduced to annihila¬ 
tion by some cataclysm, and left there without burial. Yet 
this luxuriant nature, in spite of neglect, has a wonderful 
energy, which shows us what the will and energy of man 
might obtain from it. In the early year the soil is covered with 
vigorous herbage ; springs gush forth on every side, and all 
along the valleys which they water great oleanders grow by 
the sides of the streams, tufts of agnus castus, palms, and 
gigantic terebinths. 

A very few caravans still traverse this dead land, composed 
of merchants going from Damascus to Acre or Jaffa, exchang¬ 
ing the products of the West against those of Asia, or of 
Bedouins coming to sell wheat and barley from the plains of 
the Horan and Peraea. They pass with their long files of 
camels across the hills and plains, scarcely breaking the silence 
of this mute and wasted land. 

Among the ruins which cover it and which are to be found 
at every step, in the midst of the poor villages of fellahs, four 
towns only absorb and concentrate the whole of the life: 
Acre, Safed, Tiberias, and Nazareth. Acre, where the Arabs 
come to sell their corn ; Safed and Tiberias, where the Jews 
still expect Messiah ; Nazareth, redeemed from the disdain of 
ages, and lit up for Christians by memories of the Virgin 
Mary and the Infant Jesus. That is all that remains of the 

23 


252 


JESUS CHRIST. 


life of that province in which Josephus counted in the first 
century fifteen fortified towns, more than two hundred 
villages, and two or three millions of inhabitants. 1 

The men of Galilee were a brave and vigorous race, 
agricultural and warlike, turbulent and jealous of their liberty. 
Their ancestors of Zebulon and Naphtali bore a good record 
in the history of the conquest of Canaan. 2 Ten thousand of 
them rose against their king, Jabin, at the voice of Deborah ; 
led by her, they exterminated his army at the foot of Tabor 
and reddened the waters of the Kishon with the blood of his 
corpses; their valour, which the prophetess sang, had passed 
into the veins of the Galilaeans. 

Among them Judas the Gaulonite 3 recruited his first par¬ 
tisans. The cry of this revolutionary mystic found an echo in 
the heart of these proud mountaineers ; he had no difficulty in 
persuading them that they ought to know one only Lord, their 
God, and bear every torture rather than bow themselves under 
the Gentile yoke. It was a crime in the eyes of these in¬ 
tractable sectaries to sacrifice victims offered by the Roman 
Senate for the health of Caesar and the empire ; they looked 
upon it as sacrilegious to pray for infidel princes. The im¬ 
petuous zeal with which they sought their national freedom 
gained for them, some years after the death of Jesus and in 
the last struggles against Rome, the name of “ Zealots.” 

In spite of its great memories and its energetic patriotism, 
Galilee, which had neither doctors nor celebrated schools, had 
no consideration in those times of formalism and legal re¬ 
ligion, in which the scribes and the masters had all the credit. 
The inhabitants of Jerusalem and the pure Judaeans, disdained 
it; the Galilaeans seemed to them uncultivated, ignorant, 
simple, and rude ; they derided their dialect and their accent. 4 

1 Vita Joseph ., 5, 45. 

8 Judges iv. 5, etc. 

8 Acts v. 37; Antiq. xviii. I, 6; xx. 5, 2; Bell. Jud. ii. 8, I. 

4 Cf. Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae et Talmud ., p. 151. Leipzig, 1SC4 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 253 

This little people was better than their reputation. Their 
neighbourhood to the Gentiles, which so rapidly affected the 
creed and the race of the Samaritans, did not subdue their 
robust fidelity. Galilee and Peraea, in spite of the many 
Roman and Syrophoenician inhabitants, remained essentially 
Jewish, and this alone should have been enough to inspire 
respect in the people of Judaea. Gratitude, moreover, should 
have made them just. Since the reign of the Asmonaeans, 
those persecuted in Judaea had always found a refuge in the 
mountains and inaccessible caverns of Galilee, and brave 
defenders in the children of that warlike race. 

Providence avenges the despised, and chooses those whom 
human pride rejects. Galilee, and not Judaea, was to see 
the inauguration of the Kingdom of God ; its peasants, the 
fishermen of its lake, the tax-gatherers at its ports and on 
its roads were to be the instruments of this great work. 

When Jesus, avoiding the hatred and menaces of Jewish 
authority, left Jerusalem and resolved to carry the Gospel 
into Galilee, his renown was great. His eloquence and 
doctrine, and, above all, his miracles, made of him an extra¬ 
ordinary being; he drew the crowd to him, struck then* 
imagination, awakened their curiosity and enthusiasm. 

He set himself to travel through the whole country, its 
towns and villages, to attend the small synagogues at the hour 
and day when the people assembled there. The reputation 
which preceded him always assured him of a warm welcome ; 
crowds ran to see and hear him. After the reading of the Law 
and the Prophets the minister gave him the book, and after 
having read, standing as was the custom, the passage pointed 
out, he sat down and explained it. 

The evangelization of Galilee held a considerable place in 
his public life ; it lasted from eight to nine months, from the 
Feast of Purim in the year 29 to the Feast of Tabernacles in 
the same year. The whole work of Jesus, which he called his 


254 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Kingdom, the work which was to fill the world under the 
name of the Church, was founded and organised in this brief 
period. 

The man of genius finds a whole life too short to instruct 
his disciples, to found his institutions, to raise a state and 
reform a religion : he has need of many years for the realization 
of his plans ; but Jesus was content with a few months. In 
that little tetrarchy of Herod, the most despised portion of the 
land of Israel, he revealed what he was, took possession of the 
conscience of men, in the person of a few poor Galilaeans, 
whom he made his apostles, and he inaugurated with them and 
in them that Kingdom which was to know no limits in space 
and time. 

The apparent poverty of the means is out of proportion 
with the greatness of the results, and this contrast is the greatest 
enigma of history. It is the mark of Jesus. Independent 
criticism is arrested before him and does not hesitate to 
recognise the mark of God. 

The prophet of Galilee appears to criticism with a divine 
and creative force ; all the human names of philosopher, doctor, 
legislator, reformer, and even that of prophet, which the crowd 
gave him, are insufficient; under the appearance of the Son of 
Man was truly the Son of God. 

To understand the power of his action upon a fresh class of 
subjects, and the incidents which marked his mission, we must 
know the precise state of opinion and conscience among those 
to whom he came to preach the Gospel. 

The rigid party of the Pharisees held sway over the learned 
class. In its teaching and its practices it affected a severity, 
all the greater because the lower classes, mixed with the 
numerous Gentiles of the country, had less zeal for observances, 
and less fanaticism against the customs and religion of 
foreigners ; it shared the dislike of the masses for the Roman 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 255 

dominion, and only resigned itself with difficulty to pay the 
annual tribute to Caesar. 

The aristocracy was Sadducean; it formed that party of 
the Herodians which had accepted as legitimate the reign 
of the Herods in spite of their Idumaean origin; it had both 
fortune and honour, occupied the great administrative functions, 
and in Galilee, as in Judaea, lived in opulence, disdainful of the 
people, a friend to the tetrarchs, hostile to every new influence 
which threatened to stir the religious conscience or patriotism. 
One of the most unpopular functions was that of Collectors- 
General. They had for subordinate agents the receivers and 
the Publicans or tax-gatherers, who were charged to collect 
the tribute-money. In this detested class plunder and injustice 
were the dominant vices ; the people, ground down by taxation, 
hated them; the Pharisees, whose patriotism was offended, 
could not forgive thgm their alliance with Gentiles, and their 
making themselves the instruments of national servitude ; 
they treated them as outcasts, as thieves and robbers, and 
would not even take their witness in courts of justice. 1 They 
were more numerous in Galilee than anywhere else, for the soil 
was fertile, the population dense, the roads frequented, and the 
traffic around the lake between the towns of Galilee, Decapolis, 
Trachonitis, Ituraea, and the country of Damascus was in full 
activity. 

They were recruited from the lower classes, among those 
who lived without following in all their rigour the customs of 
the Pharisees, and which the devout party, in their pride and 
ritual piety, treated with the greatest contempt, calling them 
impious and sinners, like the usurers, thieves, gamblers, shep¬ 
herds, sellers of fruit, who gathered in the sabbatical year, and 
public entertainers who gave pleasure to the crowd by training 
birds to fight. 2 The greater number in the villages and towns 
were despised by the Pharisees, who composed a little pro- 

1 Sanhedr., fol. 25, 2. 

2 Ibid. 


2 56 


JESUS CHRIST. 


vincial aristocracy, the ascendency of which was uncontested 
because it was the personification of patriotism, and, which the 
Oriental and the Jew place above everything, the knowledge 
of their sacred Book and rites. 

The Pharisaic andSadducean doctrines which, at Jerusalem, 
had a considerable influence on the middle class, did not 
penetrate the masses. In every country the common people 
are obstinately set against the refinements of science and the 
subtleties of casuistry. That which affected the crowd in the 
provinces was the ardent love of country, the idea of a 
Messiah, the deliverer, and, as a religious practice, the great 
pilgrimages to Jerusalem. 

For some months the Messianic agitation excited by 
John the Baptist was extreme ; the Galilaeans were attracted 
to him who announced the coming of God ; many had been 
affiliated to him as disciples. The imprisonment of the 
prophet, far from calming the movement, had increased its 
energy ; the prisoner of Herod was girt about in the eyes of 
the people with the aureole of a martyr. Persecution had not 
stifled the word of the prophet, but increased and consecrated 
it: all those whom he had roused still looked and waited ; the 
publicans and sinners who had confessed their sins and been 
baptised asked even more eagerly when, and how, the Lord 
would come, and what were the roads by which they would 
see his appearance. 

One word summed up these hopes and agitations : “ The 
Kingdom of God is at hand.” 1 The phrase, borrowed from 
Daniel, designated the reign of Messiah, succeeding the great 
kingdoms of the earth, and eclipsing them by its splendour 
and its blessings. The idea which the phrase somewhat 
vaguely expresses, was the life and soul of the Jewish people, 
and the main-spring of its evolution. It inspired the prophets 
with their greatest oracles ; all of them had sung of it, from 


1 Matt. iii. 2. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 257 

Joel to Zechariah and Malachi ; Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, 
Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai and Daniel; 1 all, for 
more than five centuries, had nursed in the soul of the nation 
the hope of the Kingdom of God and of the Messianic age, all 
described, in glowing and even more unmistakeable terms, the 
era to which Jehovah was, little by little, leading his people 
and mankind. 

The apocalypses of two centuries 2 which preceded the 
advent of Jesus were full of it. It was an axiom in the Jewish 
schools that every prayer into which did not enter the thought 
of the Kingdom of God was not a prayer at all. 3 In the ritual 
of the Temple, the people answered the prayers of the priests 
by the cry : “ Blessed for ever be the name of the glory of the 
Kingdom of God.” 4 

On the lips of Jesus this expression gained fire and force ; 
and went straight to the heart of the people. Every nation 
has its phrases which, at certain times, exercise a magic power. 
Diversely understood and interpreted, they serve as a rallying 
cry ; the thought which they translate is always sure to awaken 
attention, command sympathy, and inflame passion ; they 
possess this irresistible charm because they express, with 
greater or less accuracy, the ideal which at any given time 
attracts and excites a country, an age, a civilisation. 

For a great number the phrase remained vague ; the crowd 
neither defines nor analyzes, and, when it attempts to under¬ 
stand, it belittles and materialises everything. The best 
men among the Jews maintained their trust in the great 
promises of God, his mercy and faithfulness ; they awaited 
his manifestation, but did not define it, for fear they should 
misunderstand it. 

1 Cf. Joelii.,iii.; Hoseaxiv.; Micah v.; Jeremiahxxiii.4;xxx.,xxxi.31-40, 
Ezekiel xxxiv. 10-23; Isaiah xxxv., xlii., xlix.. 1 ., li., liii., lxi., etc.; Haggai ii. 
19, 18-20; Zech. ii., iii.; Malachi iii.; Daniel vii. 

2 Cf. the Book of Enoch and the Little Psalter of Solomon. 

3 Babyl . Beracoth , fol. 40, 2. 

4 Babyl . Taanith, fol. 16,2. 


258 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Beyond these it is easy to see that two main currents 
attracted and led men’s minds astray : the one earthly and 
political, the other legal and religious. Those who were 
swayed by the first expected to see, under the name of the 
Kingdom of God, the re-establishment of the kingdom of 
Israel, deliverance from the yoke of the Romans, and a Messiah 
who should be the earthly chief of his kingdom In the 
simplicity and eagerness of faith they already saw Jerusalem 
as the central city of all nations, they contemplated the House 
of Jehovah as open to the Gentiles, thronging in crowds to 
adore God, and recognize in their Messiah an universal king. 

Inflamed with hope, they were thrilled at the thought of 
a new world, overflowing with joy, a true age of gold for man¬ 
kind under the Messiah. Simple faith always cradles itself in 
illusions, and thinks of no obstacles ; the Galilaeans abandoned 
themselves all the more to these dreams because they answered 
so well to their independent and warlike nature. 

Those whom the legal and religious current carried away 
desired above all the triumph of the Mosaic Law, as the scribes 
and the Hassidim, since Ezra’s time, had interpreted it; they 
would resign themselves to a foreign yoke, provided that the 
God of Israel became the God of the universe and that the 
Torah was accepted as the universal law. This current pre¬ 
vailed in the schools and among the rulers of the people, the 
Sadducees,the friends of authority, and the moderate Pharisees 
of the school of Hillel. 

And as accumulated disasters discouraged their patriotism, 
this tendency could only increase ; it was afterwards formu¬ 
lated in a doctrine growing clearer and more definite under 
the pen of the Talmudists . 1 The Kingdom of God, for Jews 
biassed by political and religious prejudices, was only their 
own kingdom. All substituted their own ideas for the thought 
of God, some wishing to subdue the world to one nation, 

1 Cf. Bcracothy c. 2; Gemara BabyL , fol. 13, 2, f. 15, 1 ; Zoliar Levit 
f. 53 - 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 259 

others desiring to enslave consciences to an imperfect law ; 
but the Jewish nation was destined to perish, and the Mosaic 
Law to be completed. Jesus was the only being who compre¬ 
hended and revealed in its fulness the divine thought which is 
summed up in the phrase, “ The Kingdom of God.” 

He adopted this popular expression in his Galilaean 
mission ; none answered better to his designs and work, for it 
contained all his doctrine and plan ; it was his glory, his 
reason for existence, his whole genius. 

Every word, every action of his life, had reference to it. 
When he preached, it was to publish the Gospel of the King¬ 
dom and explain what it was ; when he taught the crowd on 
the mountain, it was to promulgate its laws ; when he spoke 
to the people in parables, on the shores of the lake, it was to 
set forth, in images, the mysteries of the Kingdom, its origin 
and evolution, its strifes and victories ; when he prayed and 
taught us to pray, it was that we should ask for its advent ; 
when he multiplied his miracles, it was to establish that he 
was its founder and Lord ; when he chose his apostles, it was 
to perpetuate his Kingdom after him, and make sure that it 
would be extended in the heart of mankind ; when he died, it 
was that by his death he might overcome the obstacles which 
hindered its establishment ; when he poured the Spirit of 
God into the hearts of those who believed on him, it was 
because the outpouring of the Spirit is the essence of the 
Kingdom ; when he desired that all should believe in him, it 
is because he is the only centre whence men can draw the 
Spirit which alone gives God the Kingdom; when he was 
transfigured before a few of his disciples, it was to show them 
what the human being becomes in this Kingdom; when he 
disclosed to them in prophetic discourse the scenes of the 
future, of the end of time, and that which is beyond, it was to 
show them the splendour of the universe reserved for the new 
race of the sons of God. 

The thought of the Master does not exhibit the least trace 


26 o 


JESUS CHRIST. 


of the prejudices of his nation and time ; it was equally free 
from the national and political element of the future Zealots 
and the legal and Mosaic element of Pharisaism. We shall 
not find in the whole of history a single great man who has 
not, in some degree, made a pact with the errors of his time 
and the narrowness of his surroundings ; but Jesus avoided 
this inferiority of the greatest men. His thought was pure, 
and had all the marks of truth : universality, eternity, immu¬ 
tability. In that they have misunderstood and falsified his 
thought, almost all modern historians have mistaken his per¬ 
son, his work, and his vocation. Of all the ideas which human 
intelligence has ever conceived, none has ever equalled it in 
height, in depth, in breadth, and extent; always fresh and 
always necessary, it is at once most human and most divine. 

It will be said then that God did not rule over mankind, since 
the coming of the Kingdom was spoken of as good news. The 
world is the kingdom of matter and its laws, the kingdom of 
the animal and his instincts, the kingdom of intelligent and 
free man, in slavery to nature that he does not know, to 
powerful instincts which he cannot master, confounding God 
with his creatures, adoring the creature and forgetting God, 
multiplying his kind upon the earth, given over to his errors 
and vices, to his passions and sorrows, to slavery and death. 
In this night, full of darkness and delusion, in the midst of all 
races and peoples, all civilizations and religions, one people, 
one race, one civilization, one religion, kept, through twenty 
centuries, the pure worship of the true God, but the terrible 
God, who dictated to the Jew his law of righteousness and of 
slavery, only sketched out his Kingdom. The spirit of fear by 
which he curbed the will, had not succeeded in taking posses¬ 
sion of the perverted world. A great hope shone only in 
certain souls, interpreting the desire of universal sorrow; and 
it was this hope that Jesus was to crown. 

His mind was full of this work, and therefore he said, “ The 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 26 1 

time is at hand.” The greatest prophets could only hope : one 
of them marked the expected hour, but Jesus alone, because 
he possessed all in himself, was able to give all that mankind 
demanded in its confused aspirations. 

In order that this heavenly Kingdom might be realized, it 
was before all things necessary that God himself should inter¬ 
vene personally in his work ; now this personal intervention, 
so clearly announced by the prophet, was accomplished in 
Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, possessing at once, in all 
their fulness,.the power of God and the power of man ; it was 
necessary that the God who was unknown and misunder¬ 
stood should reveal himself in his truth and in his will; now, 
Jesus alone by his absolute union with God, Jesus who alone 
knew the Father and all the secrets of infinite wisdom, brings 
us this double revelation ; it was necessary that the Spirit of 
God, of which Christ had received the whole anointing, should 
be communicated to free man: now Jesus is the only source 
of that Spirit. Carnal man was to lend himself to that com¬ 
munication, to renounce himself, to be transformed, and to 
believe : Jesus demanded this of him and gave him the power 
to accomplish it. But the Kingdom of God being intended for 
all ages, all nations, and all civilizations, Jesus chose his work¬ 
men, whose duty was to continue his work, visibly and 
infallibly, to propagate and extend the divine Kingdom : and 
this he called his Church. 

Considered in its essential elements, the Kingdom of God 
implies a chief, a law, and subjects. The chief is Jesus ; the 
law is the living Spirit of God or the will of the Father; his 
subjects are the assembly of men who by faith recognise their 
head, open their hearts by repentance to the Spirit, and accept 
his will in love. 

Considered in its evolution, it, like all that grows, has three 
phases : its origin, its laborious growth, and its consummation. 
In its initial phase it is concentrated in Jesus and the first 
believers in him; in its growth, it includes the apostolic 


262 


JESUS CHRIST. 


hierarchy, and all the believers who obeyed that hierarchy as 
the depository of the powers of the unseen Christ; in its con¬ 
summation it represents the glorious term of mankind regen¬ 
erated in the glory reserved for the elect. These three states, 
bound each to the other, proceed each from the other ; the 
Church springs from the divine germ, which is Christ, growing 
like the branches of a giant tree which is to cover the world ; 
and mankind, entirely transfigured by Christ, springs out of 
mankind suffering with him, given over, like him, to persecution 
and strife, till the Spirit of God glorifies it in the fulness of life, 
as was the case with Jesus. 

The Kingdom of God thus embraces all times and all 
worlds ; it is prepared upon earth, where it suffers violence, 
but it is to fill the heaven, at the time ordained by him who 
rules all things, who alone has the secret of his work and of 
the time. 

We see, therefore, that the Kingdom of God is the kingdom 
of the Spirit, since the Spirit of God himself has founded it, 
and that, in order to participate in it, man must renounce the 
flesh and be born in the Spirit; that it destroys nothing, but 
fulfils all things, since it communicates to man the power 
and the light of God which complete all things; that it is 
not of this world, since the world contains only matter, 
physical life, and reason, which are all inferior to the Spirit 
of God ; that it suffers violence and is only won by an exercise 
of the will, for man, a slave to matter, to his instincts and vices, 
is obliged to transform himself with difficulty, and renounce 
matter, his passions, and his needs, in order to enter it ; that it 
is within man, for the Spirit of God makes his habitation in 
the soul and conscience ; that it is eternal, for the Spirit of 
God which constitutes it, is above all times and ages, all that 
passes away or dies ; that no power can prevail against it, for 
no force can prevail against God ; that it is peaceful, for the 
Spirit of God is love, and where love reigns, there reign also 
order and peace. We see finally how this invisible Kingdom 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 263 

is realised socially and visibly, by the Church founded on Jesus, 
in order to call together, little by little, from out the world and 
the ages, predestined souls, perpetuating his Spirit, his word, 
and his power. 

The advent of the Kingdom of God, as Jesus conceived it, 
is no longer a Jewish, but a human question. The Gospel 
which contains this news is henceforth the book for all, and 
he who realised it is no longer merely the Messiah of the 
Jews, but the universal Mediator. The Kingdom is more 
than the divine and definite transformation of the religion of 
Israel: it is religion itself in its absolute perfection. 

With Jesus a new Kingdom in its fullest sense was truly 
inaugurated on earth ; an infinite and eternal Kingdom, which 
should overrule and bring to perfection the earlier kingdoms 
of matter, physical life and mankind. Above matter, the 
animal forces, and reason, there should be henceforward in 
incessant activity the living and personal Spirit of God. He 
took possession of mankind in Christ; he was to pass beyond 
Christ, to conquer all souls of good will, all races, all civilisa¬ 
tions ; he was to be the supreme refuge of the poor, the 
sorrowful, and the humble of this world, of those overwhelmed 
by present realities, who look for a new progress in truth and 
goodness, who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who wish 
to conquer evil and do not find in themselves the power to 
subdue it. These are the greater number, the crowd; these 
are mankind. For all others, those who are satisfied and 
fortunate, the strong who oppress the weak, the proud who 
pride themselves on their limited knowledge, their legalism and 
empty wisdom ; the corrupt who deceive themselves, and do 
not know the torment of the infinite : for all these the King¬ 
dom of God remains inaccessible and incomprehensible ; they 
will remain in darkness and sorrow, without end and without 
hope. 

The Galilaean period of the life of Jesus had an interest far 


264 


JESUS CHRIST. 


beyond the poor Jews in the tetrarchy of Antipas. What 
was passing there was to ring through the universe ; the words 
spoken there were to be repeated to the four corners of the 
world ; the work founded there, round the lake of Gennesareth, 
was to extend to every shore ; the law promulgated on the 
Mount was to be no passing and special code, but the eternal 
and universal code which should rule every conscience ; the 
miracles accomplished there were to be more than simple 
cures of the sick and afflicted, they were to be signs of the 
invisible healing of wounded hearts and paralytic souls, of 
darkened minds of which the world is full; the chosen apostles 
were to become the great Church, they were to be perpetuated 
through the ages, to invade the earth and conquer it for Christ. 

To accomplish his work, Jesus had the force of God which 
in him was translated into its human equivalents of wisdom, 
power, and goodness. His wisdom gave light, his power bore 
rule over matter and spirit, his goodness attracted all to him. 
Nothing which could give efficacy and authority to speech 
was wanting to that of Jesus. The Gospels, which never 
dream for an instant of apologising for their hero, disclose the 
extraordinary influence which he exercised. One phrase 
occurs over and over again in their narrative: the multitude, 
they say, was astonished . 1 Even those who were sent as spies 
returned overwhelmed : “ Never man spake like this man,” 
they said to those who sent them . 2 

What we call eloquence, the genius of the spoken word, 
was in him not an art, but a miraculous gift of the Spirit. No 
apostle nor prophet has equalled him ; none has had as he 
the secret of persuading and moving ; no one has instilled 
into the mind stronger and more sublime convictions, more 
heroic virtues, more energy and more love. His word has 
been one of the levers by which he has moved the world ; 

1 Matt. vii. 28 ; Mark vi. 2 ; Luke iv. 22, 32, etc 

8 John vii. 46. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 265 

he knew how to speak truth to all in season. For seven 
months he held entranced the whole people of Galilee, had led 
them to follow his steps far from towns and villages, into the 
desert, to the shores of the lake of Tiberias and its hills. 

Human eloquence is often empty, uttering only common¬ 
place imperfect truths, mutilated by ignorance, disfigured by 
error, and exaggerated by passion. It is rarely animated by 
the fire of the Spirit; hence its weakness and sterility. Its 
feeble light is soon quenched, together with the wavering 
thought and timid virtue whence it draws its inspiration. The 
fullest and most emotional words scarcely overpass the limits 
of a nation or an age; beyond that they die, like delicate seeds 
which can only germinate in a few furrows. 

The words of Jesus, which lay bare his whole soul, embody 
the thought and power of God. They were Spirit and Life, 
they possessed supreme originality, boldness and clearness, 
strength and appropriateness ; they cut and thrust like a two- 
edged sword. Even when he occasionally borrowed expres¬ 
sions from the prophets he did not repeat them, but gave new 
light to the ancient formulas, together with a new sense ; he 
completed and fulfilled them. His words sparkled with inspi¬ 
ration from the fulness of the living God, and carried with them 
the living God. “ Heaven and earth shall pass away,” Jesus 
dared to say, “ but my words shall not pass away .” 1 In fact 
they still remain in the human consciousness like stars in the 
night. 

The human race admires aphorisms gathered from his lips 
as the perfect and ideal expression of the truth. No prayer 
can replace his, or hold towards God, any other language than 
“Our Father, who art in heaven.” He has given us the 
formula for all the heroic virtues ; for charity: “ Love your 
enemies, and do good to them that hate you ” ; 2 for humility ; 
“ Thou hypocrite, who canst see the mote in thy brother’s eye, 

1 Mark xiii. 31. 

3 Matt. v. 44, etc. 


266 


JESUS CHRIST. 


but dost not see the beam in thine own eye ” ; 1 of mercy 
towards the sinner : “ Let him that is without sin cast the 
first stone at her ” ; 2 of pardon for executioners : “ Father, 
forgive them ; for they know not what they do ” ; 3 of consola¬ 
tion and strength in sorrow : “ Come unto me, all ye who are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest .” 4 He has created a 
science of happiness, in those maxims which seem to defy 
human wisdom, and have never deceived any. Happy are 
the poor, the meek, the sorrowful, those who hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, the peacemakers, the persecuted ; these 
are they who shall inherit the Kingdom of God . 5 

The word of Jesus possessed creative energy. When a 
man expresses a truth, he can only hope for good, but has no 
power to produce it. Jesus did the good of which he spoke ; 
his words were those of one who had sovereign and irresis¬ 
tible power. With a word he put to flight and subdued evil 
spirits, healed the sick, calmed every sorrow, gave movement 
to the paralytic, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, life to 
the dead. He had the gift of transforming the soul. Who¬ 
ever came near the prophet, entreating him with faith, was 
sure to be heard. Gifts fell in showers from his lips and his 
hands ; not some isolated miracle only manifested the Spirit 
whose unction he had received , 6 but floods of miracles. The 
witness to this is distinct; miracles were not an exceptional 
phenomenon in the life of Jesus, they were the normal state, 
the constant signs, of his inexhaustible goodness ; they were 
produced as soon as any approached him with confidence 
and a sense of need. 

The wonder-worker attracted and subdued still more than 


1 Matt. vii. 3 ; Luke vi. /[X. 

2 John viii. 7 . 

3 Luke xxiii. 34. 

1 Matt. xi. 28. 

6 Matt. v. 1, etc. 

6 Acts iv. 27 ; x 38. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 267 

the evangelist; the people are everywhere the same in the East 
as in the West; power enthrals more than intelligence, startling 
facts more than eloquent words, miracles more than sermons. 
But when these two elements are united their influence is 
irresistible. No one before Jesus, and no one after him, has 
appeared on the earth so armed with the double power of 
God. The prophets had only intermittent rays of his light, 
and a force which they could borrow for exceptional works : 
Jesus possessed, as his own gift, eternal truth which enlightens, 
and infinite power, which life and death, nature and mankind 
obey. 

Another element of popular power in Jesus was his kind 
and gentle character. He did not flatter the people as those 
who lead them astray, but he loved them. Everything in 
him was at the service of this love. He had compassion on 
the poor, the weak, the unhappy, the sinful and despised. 
This was in a marked contrast with the attitude of the 
Pharisees, the doctors, the leaders of every kind, priests, 
elders, scribes, who make a precept and almost a virtue of 
despising the populace. This character of Jesus was mani¬ 
fested in his whole life, in his words and deeds. In seeing 
him, the well-known passage of Isaiah about the servant of 
Jehovah recurs to mind : “Behold my servant, whom I up¬ 
hold ; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth ; I have put 
my spirit upon him : he shall bring forth judgment to the 
Gentiles. He shall not cry, qor lift up, nor cause his voice to 
be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, 
and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring 
forth judgment unto truth .” 1 

A man endowed with superior genius overawes by his 
very superiority ; and, in spite of himself, is in some degree 
an object of alarm. Power isolates ; men fear it and avoid it 

1 Isaiah xlii. 1, etc. 

24 


268 


JESUS CHRIST. 


rather than submit to it; it even renders ill at ease those 
very persons to whom it deigns to bend. Incapable of 
inspiring confidence and affection, strong men have to resign 
themselves to rule by fear. 

Jesus escaped this common law ; the harmony and power 
of his faculties, his infinite gentleness, charmed and attracted 
all who were weak, suffering, downcast, unfortunate, that is to 
say, the people. Himself born among the poor, and destined 
to a martyr’s life, he exercised the charm reserved for men 
who bear the aureole of suffering. 

His sorrowful vocation was ever before his eyes : he knew 
and felt that he was destined to an ignominious death ; the 
thought veiled his whole being in sadness, but the love of 
God and men was over all, and sadness mingling itself with 
his goodness, rendered this still more expressive and more 
attractive. 

The preaching of the Gospel in Galilee had a thoroughly 
popular character. Jesus, first taking the synagogues for the 
theatre of his preaching, where the crowd came together 
every Sabbath, was sure of reaching the entire population. 
He did not proceed like John, the prophet of the desert, 
who called the people to him, but he took the initiative 
by seeking of himself its presence: a sign of power and 
goodness. 

If John stirred the Jewish conscience by the simple 
declaration of the advent of the Kingdom of God, Jesus must 
have exercised a far greater sway when he published to the 
Galilaean multitude that the Kingdom of God had come. 
Under any circumstances, this stirring news was at once 
certain to raise grave difficulties. The first was connected 
with the very idea of the Kingdom which was preached, the 
second with that of Messiah its founder. Everything in the 
doctrine and person of Jesus assailed the prejudices of the 
Galilaean people and doctors. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 269 

They had expected a political kingdom : Jesus announced 
a spiritual and interior Kingdom; they had hoped that the 
Law would be dominant: Jesus prophesied the Kingdom of 
the Spirit; they had desired a Messiah armed with earthly 
power : Jesus presented himself without any human authority, 
with no other force than that of his Father, the wisdom 
which teaches eternal Truth, the power which heals the soul 
and the body ; they dreamed of a triumph of the nation, and 
of the race of Abraham after the flesh, over all peoples: Jesus 
came to inaugurate a nation and a race of men regenerated 
by the Spirit; they were persuaded that the name of sons of 
Abraham, and faithfulness to the Law of Moses, would suffice 
for their incorporation into the new people of God : Jesus 
demanded only moral transformation and faith in his word. 

All was against him : we shall never find in Jesus that 
art, so familiar to politicians, of flattering opinion in order to 
gain it. He accommodated himself to weakness alone, by 
veiling truths too lofty for the people to understand ; and he 
tamed men’s minds in order to lead them gently to the light. 
But even the power of God cannot avoid the resistance of 
man here below ; Jesus encountered it, and he inaugurated 
his Galilaean apostleship by failure. 

The Gospel documents do not define the villages and 
towns of Galilee, to which he went preaching the good news of 
the Kingdom of God. St. Luke, however, tells us in detail of a 
journey which he made to Nazareth at this time r 1 and gives 
an animated narrative which brings before us a scene in a Jewish 
synagogue, and gives us the first commentary of Jesus on the 
nature of his Kingdom. 

It would seem that Jesus had not returned to his own 
country, since the day when he had quitted it, in going 
to the Jordan to receive baptism from John. He would 


1 Luke iv. 16, etc. 


270 


JESUS CHRIST. 


now return and preach the Gospel in the town where he had 
grown up in obscurity, and consecrate to it the first-fruits of 
his Galilaean apostolate. 

On the Sabbath day he came, as usual, to the synagogue, 
where so often he had been seen, seated in silence, in the 
lower places, undistinguished among his countrymen, listening 
to the reading of the Law, and the commentaries of the doctors 
and the elders. The unknown workman now reappeared 
with the renown of a prophet, and curiosity drew all eyes 
upon him. Men in the little town must have been impatient 
to verify all that was told of him ; the rulers of the synagogue 
must have regarded him with a certain arrogance ; the limited 
knowledge of the doctors in the provinces disposed them but ill 
to receive the words of an unlettered artisan, who, having 
never been at school, had no title to teach, and openly broke 
with their customs. 

After the recitation of the accustomed prayers, and the 
reading of the Law, Jesus was honoured by being asked 
to read a passage from the Prophets. At the order of the 
president, the “ Hasan ” offered him the sacred roll ; he 
opened it, and found the following passage from the Prophet 
Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the 
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; 
he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim 
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, 
and the day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that 
mourn ; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give 
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the 
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that they might 
be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that 
he might be glorified .” 1 He closed the book, gave it to the 


1 Isaiah lxi. i, etc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 271 

“ Hasan,” and sat down. All looked on in silence. Then he 
said : “ What ye have heard, is this day fulfilled.” 

Jesus explained to the people of Nazareth that it was he 
on whom the Spirit of the Lord had descended, that in virtue 
of this divine unction he was the Messianic envoy, the chief 
of the Kingdom of God ; and he taught the nature of this 
Kingdom as Isaiah had prophesied it. 

Such a picture had nothing which could flatter the notion 
then in favour among the Pharisees and in the schools. The 
fanatical patriots and the Zealots of the Law did not therein 
find their conventional ideal. Under its figurative language 
they sought in vain an allusion to the future restoration of the 
kingdom of Israel, to its enfranchisement from the Roman 
yoke, to the triumphant extension of the Law in which the 
pride of the people wrapped itself; it had only to do with the 
love and infinite mercy of the Eternal : which, indeed, created 
the expected Kingdom ; it spoke only of the poor, the humble, 
those in chains and in prison, those afflicted and weeping: 
these were the elect of the new Kingdom. They exist every¬ 
where, in the whole world, as in Israel, for everywhere the 
human soul suffers ; waiting in chains whose evil crushes 
them, everywhere they call on him who alone enlightens and 
consoles, gives freedom and peace. He who should carry 
the good news to every conscience, this consoler, this 
liberator, did not exist among men ; it must be that 
God would send him, and, in order that he might accom¬ 
plish his work, the Spirit of God must be in him. By this 
Spirit he would bring about the reign of God and set up the 
Kingdom destined to accomplish and crown the evolution of 
things. 

The approbation and admiration were unanimous. We 
may judge how moving was the accent by the effect produced, 
how great were the unction and eloquence with which Jesus 
spoke of the love of God, and the sorrows of the soul deprived 


272 


JESUS CHRIST. 


of him. How eagerly he pointed out the joy reserved for 
those who would receive the good news, place the diadem 
upon their brow and be perfumed with the oil of peace, put on 
the mantle of joy, and grow in righteousness like the terebinth 
trees of God. 

However, as soon as the first excitement died away, an 
objection sprung up in the minds of a great number. Jesus 
had clearly declared himself the Messiah ; it was asked by 
what right he dared to claim this title, and his humble birth 
was remembered with disdain : “ Is not this,” they said, “ the 
son of Joseph ? ” 

Opposition grew warmer; and he was pressed in an 
offended tone for the signs upon which he founded such high 
pretensions. Impartial reasoners remain calm ; but minds 
whose preconceived ideas are wounded are not impartial. At 
that time fanaticism was almost universal among the Jews : 
they demanded signs, and exacted these from Jesus as a jus¬ 
tification of his claims as Messiah. Jesus refused them to the 
Nazarenes, as he always refused them to those who demanded 
them in a like spirit of unbelief. He gave them only to those 
who had faith, never to those who discussed with pride and 
ill-temper. This is a remarkable fact in his whole life, and a 
characteristic feature of his conduct. But signs had already 
been accomplished at Jerusalem, in Judaea and at Capernaum ; 
and surely he had a right to rely on them before his fellow- 
citizens, who were scandalised that the son of Joseph should 
declare himself the ambassador of God. “And he said unto 
them: Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, 
heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, 
do also here in thy country.” 

Jesus remained inexorable. Nothing had any weight 
with him save trust and love; no distrust affected him, no 
importunity made him give way. Like his Father, he resisted 
the proud and violent, and loved the humble and the meek. 
And he said : “ Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 273 

in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows 
were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut 
up three years and six months, when great famine was 
throughout all the land ; but unto none of them was Elias 
sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that 
was a widow . 1 And many lepers were in Israel in the time 
of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, 
saving Naaman the Syrian.” 2 Jesus declared a hard truth to 
his assailants. He intimated by these examples that the 
Kingdom of God is not confined to the people of the 
prophets, that this obstinate people would not receive him, 
that the Messiah would be sent to the Gentiles; to those 
paupers and lepers of whom the poor woman of Sarepta and 
Naaman the Syrian were the type. Nothing could more 
cruelly wound the religious pride of the Pharisees and their 
false patriotism. 

The teaching of Jesus was, however, only that of the 
prophets about the Kingdom of God and the Messiah him¬ 
self ; but those whom error and passion lead astray, never 
see anything beyond that which caresses their passion and 
flatters their errors. Truth does not enlighten, but irritates 
them ; they do not look any more, but blind themselves; 
carried away by anger, violence is their only inspiration ; 
they curse, excommunicate, stone, and kill. 

Exasperated by the words of the Prophet who judged 
them unworthy to be witnesses of his miracles, angered by 
his language about the Gentiles and the Holy People, the 
Nazarenes rose in wrath. In defiance of their Law, without 
previous judgment and without trial, they cast him out of the 
synagogue, drove him from their town as an excommunicate 
person ; and, in their fanaticism, endeavoured to cast him from 
the top of a rock. 

A divine power guarded Jesus so that he escaped from 

1 I. Kings xvii. 9. 

9 II. Kings v. 9-14. 


274 


JESUS CHRIST. 


this outburst. The Gospel shows him to us calm and gentle, 
among all these excited crowds ; no one laid hand upon him, 
they dispersed on either side and he went his way . 1 None 
had power over Jesus. The Spirit which filled him kept him 
safe. He went as the Spirit carried him, into the midst of 
men; who, often as they banded themselves against him, were 
powerless to hurt him unless he surrendered himself to their 
attacks. He quitted Nazareth, and must have wept over it, for 
if nothing gives him more joy than faith, so nothing makes him 
so sorrowful as unbelief. 

It is the lot of all those who are meek and humble to be 
misunderstood and persecuted. He took the way to the lake 
across the mountain by Cana and the plain of El Batouf and 
directed his steps towards Capernaum. 

1 Luke iv. 30. 


CHAPTER II. 


JESUS AT CAPERNAUM. 

The Lake of Gennesareth is the gem of Galilee ; its waters 
are not of an unchanging blue, they resemble in their varying 
tints the opal rather than the sapphire. To this jewel the 
mountains form a beautiful setting. On the west, the grey 
heights of Safed, the steep rocks of Wady Hamam, Kurn- 
Hattin, the summit of Arbela and the mountains of Tiberias ; 
on the east, the last of the series of green slopes, which 
descend, as it were, in waves from the high country of 
Gaulonitis, and which in places rear themselves up to fall 
again precipitously; on the north, the hills of Chorazin, 
and in the distance the great mount of Hermon sparkling 
with snow—close the horizon on all sides. To this 
immense circle there is only a narrow opening in the 
south, which forms the valley of the Jordan and makes 
a way for the river. The southern sky, framed between 
the blue and cloudy masses of the mountains of Beisan and 
Ajlun, is of a silvery whiteness. 

Volcanoes have rent these mountains and hills, as they 
have shaken the wild tracts around the Dead Sea, and dark 
blocks of basalt, which have been thrown up, are to be seen 
on all sides. But yet what a contrast there is between the 
Dead Sea and the Lake of Tiberias, the one is an abyss, 
the other a cup ; the anger of God seems to pervade the 
one, his love the other ; here there is a gloomy and terrible 
desolation, there a peaceful serenity. The lake measures 


276 


JESUS CHRIST. 


about thirteen miles in length from north to south; it 
expands, however, towards the west shore, where the 
shore describes a large semicircle from the little mount 
of Mejdel to the promontory of Khan el-Minyeh; its 
greatest length is from eight to ten miles, and its form is 
an irregular oval. 

When the sky, brilliant with white light, is reflected in 
the lake, it appears to glitter as the snow of Hermon. 
The eye cannot distinguish where the lake ends and the 
sky begins. The hills on both shores soften in outline and 
in colour as they recede ; the nearest are of a dark violet 
colour, the more distant are of a pale blue. In the evening, 
after sunset, the lake seems to be asleep; and its waters, 
glassy and without ripples, take metallic tints. Seen at its 
full breadth, the lake fades into the land; a single line, brilliant 
as a wire of steel, marks the shore. The confused reflec¬ 
tions of the hills appear as broad purple belts on a green 
background. 

Occasionally a breeze comes down from the mountains, 
and, without ruffling this beautiful still surface, causes a vibra¬ 
tion almost like a shudder. As the day closes in, the colours 
of the lake gradually fade and become merged in a violet 
grey, like the sky. When the stars rise, the breeze freshens, 
the waves break on the shingle, lap against the clusters of 
oleander and make the great reeds tremble. The lake awakes 
from its slumber and speaks with sounds of infinite sweetness. 
It is thought that the lake was called Chinneroth in olden 
times because it bore the form of a harp, the kinnor of 
the Hebrews. It has its harmony no less. 

In former days, when Jesus sailed upon these waters, a 
number of towns bordered the lake,—Capernaum, Bethsaida, 
Mejdel, Julias, Kersa, Gamala, Tarichaea, Hippos and Kufeir. 
Caravans were numerous on the roads around the lake, and 
came down to it by the Wady Hamam, El-Armud, and 
El-Nashi from Sidon, Tyre, and Acre, and by the Wady 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 277 

Shukayif and Semak, from Damascus, Gaulonitis, Ituraea, 
Trachonitis, and Hauran. 

At the present day Tiberias is the only town standing, 
besides two or three miserable fellah villages. Everywhere 
there are ruins, confused heaps of rough or hewn stone, which 
treasure nothing of the past except the name. At nightfall 
fires gleam on the western shore; these are the fires of Bedouins 
encamped in groves of sidr in the midst of the long grass. 
There are no longer caravans, but rows of camels may be 
seen carrying their nomad masters and all their families 
across the fields, with the women and children sitting on the 
rolled-up tents. 

It was here, on the borders of this predestined sea , 1 that 
Jesus, driven from Nazareth, came to seek refuge. 

Capernaum was one of the towns most frequented by the 
caravans. It was situated at the northern point of the lake, 
a little nearer to the western shore than to the mouth of the 
Jordan, and stood at the entrance of the Wady Nasif, which 
contained the road leading to Damascus through Gaulonitis, on 
the gentle slopes which descend to the lake from the heights of 
Safed. Its houses extended down to the beach. The fishing 
industry was very active, and the little creeks served as 
harbours for the fishermen’s boats. There was a special 
market at Jerusalem where the boatmen from the lake went 
to sell their dried fish. It is difficult to give the number of 
the population of Capernaum. As it was a frontier town of 
the tetrarchy, it had an enclosure of walls, a tax-office, and 
custom-houses. The inhabitants were proud of their syna¬ 
gogue, which they owed to the munificence of a centurion. 

Only heaps of shapeless ruins, half buried under the earth, 
remain of this town, where Jesus dwelt. The extent of the 
ruins, which cover an area less than a mile in length and about 


1 Isa. lx. 2. 


278 


JESUS CHRIST. 


half a mile in width, denotes that it was a small city. 
Even the name has almost disappeared : Capernaum is now 
Tell-Hum . 1 

As we walk over these tomb-like mounds, and follow 
the walls almost level with the ground, it is impossible to 
reconstruct the ancient town. The synagogue alone is 
recognisable by its magnificent ruins. Its larger courses 
of polished limestone remain in place. We can measure 
the size of the building, and count the four rows of pillars 
which divided the interior into five naves. The threshold 
of the great door, the mark of the hinges, the entablatures, 
the shafts of the pillars, fragments of the frieze, and the 
acanthus-leaves of the capitals may be seen. 

Probably this is the very spot where Jesus came and spoke 
every Sabbath day for several months. Close at hand, with 
its back to the eastern wall of this edifice, another building 
of more recent date may be recognised ; it is no doubt the 
church built by the Jewish convert Josephus, in the time ot 
Constantine, on the site of Peter’s house, the dwelling-place 
of Jesus. , 

Centuries and revolutions have passed over Capernaum, 
fulfilling the denunciations cast upon the town by the Prophet 
of Galilee, because, misled by the gentleness of his advent, it 
would not receive the salvation which he brought. The 
disloyal town has disappeared, but the lake, the country, the 
sky remain unchanged. There are the very hills which Jesus 
ascended, alone or with his disciples, to pray and to speak to 
the people ; the very paths which he followed, the same wave- 
worn stones on which he rested, the same shores covered with 
oleanders and agnus-castus along which he roamed. The 
horizon is the same; on the west, towards the green plain of 
Gennesareth, the Valley of Doves, with its steep and reddish 
rocks, by which he came from Nazareth, and the little mount 

1 See Appendix D, Verification of the Site of Capernaum. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 279 

of Mejdel with its ruined tower, possibly the ancient dwelling- 
place of Mary Magdalene ; nearer, and close to Capernaum, is 
Bethsaida, the home of his most loved apostles ; on the east, 
Julias, and the lonely mountains where he for the first time 
multiplied the loaves of bread ; the country of the Gergesenes, 
and Kersa, where he cast out devils ; on the south, the bound¬ 
less lake, the sky flooded with light 

It is not possible to say under what circumstances the 
flight of Jesus to Capernaum occurred. Was he accompanied 
by his mother and by members of his family ? Did he stop 
at Cana ? Did he take some of his disciples with him ? The 
silence of the Evangelists forbids us to answer these questions. 
But it is of importance for us to observe that Jesus, though 
cast out and repudiated by the Nazarenes, steadfastly con¬ 
tinued his great work. 

Even in this flight he began to attach to himself by the 
closest ties the disciples who were to labour with him. 
Hitherto they had not always followed in his train ; they had 
returned to their own families and to their own work, after 
having accompanied him on his journeys to Jerusalem. On 
their return from the Feast of Purim, when Jesus proceeded 
towards Nazareth, the disciples dispersed, each one taking the 
road to his own home. 

Jesus, on approaching the shores of the lake, near Bethsaida, 
was followed by an increasing multitude. The people pressed 
upon him, says one Evangelist , 1 to hear the word of God 
As he walked along the beach he saw two ships, but the 
fishermen were gone out of them and were washing their nets. 
One belonged to Peter ; this he entered, and prayed him that 
he would thrust out a little from the land ; then he sat down, 
and from the ship he taught the people who remained on 
shore. 


1 


1 Luke v. 1. 


280 


JESUS CHRIST. 


When he had finished speaking, he said unto Simon: 
“ Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a 
draught.” “ Master,” said Simon, “ we have toiled all the night, 
and have taken nothing : nevertheless at thy word I will let 
down the net.” He did so, and they took such a great multi¬ 
tude of fishes that the net brake. They beckoned to their 
partners, who were in the other ship, to come and help them, 
and when these had come, they filled the two ships so that they 
began to sink. When Simon saw it, he fell at Jesus’ feet. 
* Depart from me,” he said, “ for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 

The whole character of Peter is revealed in these words: 
spontaneous, frank, impetuous, and disinterested. They were 
amazed, both he and all that were with him, at the sight of 
such a draught of fishes. J ames and John, the sons of Zebedee, 
were there. Jesus then said unto Simon : “ Fear not; from 
henceforth thou shalt catch men.” The cry of Peter had 
touched him. The man who recognises his own unworthiness 
grows great in the sight of God. Peter, by speaking of himself 
as a sinful man, acknowledged the holiness of his Master. 
This feeling of his own nothingness and of the greatness of Jesus 
made him worthy to be initiated into his own high destiny. 
The first condition of apostleship is distrust of self. 

“ And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw 
James and John his brother, who were in a ship mending 
their nets. He called them, and they left their nets and their 
father, Zebedee, in the ship with the hired servants, and went 
after him .” 1 

The first outline of the public work of Jesus now begins 
to show itself. The calling of the apostles is the first shoot 
of that living growth which will develop into the visible 
Church. The work to which he calls his disciples is the 
work of drawing men to him, to his teaching, to his law. 

In his first appeal on the banks of the Jordan he had 


Matt. xiii. 18-22 ; Mark i. 16-20. 





KEFR KENNA, THE TRADITIONAL CANA 


























































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 281 

attracted men to him, without telling them whither he was 
leading them, but now he makes known to them their great 
destiny in words of the striking symbolism which he so often 
used : “ Fishers of men.” 

The little sea of Galilee represented the world, the four 
fishermen of Bethsaida the forerunners of that numberless 
band of apostles who were to cast the net for mankind. The 
design is immense, the workers nothing ; but Jesus calls them, 
and just as God, whom he calls his Father, created the world 
out of nothing, so Jesus also will save it with nothing. 
The weakness of man will bear witness to the strength of 
God. 

Jesus, attended by his four disciples, arrived at Capernaum . 1 

He was not unknown, for he had made a short stay there 
before his first journey to Jerusalem for the first Passover of 
his public life . 2 Some months later the healing of 
the son of the steward of Herod the tetrarch had made 
lim famous . 3 The prophets had declared that the light 
of God would shine on the borders of this sea, where 
Capernaum stood, even to the borders of Zebulun and 
Naphtali . 4 

It was the Sabbath day, and Jesus and his disciples 
went to the synagogue, where he preached. The impression 
he made was very great; he separated himself from all the 
Masters, from the Pharisees, and from the Scribes; he did not, 
after their fashion, appeal to the authority of the Elders, nor 
make use of the name of Hillel, nor of Schammai, but spoke 
in his own name and applied to himself, with sovereign 
authority, the words of the prophets ; so great were his power 
and his conviction that, in spite of the novelty of his teaching, 

1 Matt. iv. 14; Matt. viii. 14-17 ; Mark i. 21-39; Luk “ iv - 3 l - 44 * 

* See Book II., ch. 5. 

8 See Book II., ch. 6. 

4 Isaiah ix. 3. 


282 


JESUS CHRIST. 


even those men who were slaves to formula could not resist 
the charm of his personal influence. 

An unexpected incident occurred which called forth in 
Jesus the exercise of a new power, and which increased still 
more the admiration of the crowd. There was in the as¬ 
sembly a man possessed of an unclean spirit, who cried out 
suddenly with a loud voice and demanded of Jesus : “What 
have we to do with thee ? Let us alone, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, 
the Holy One of God.” Jesus rebuked him. “Hold thy 
peace,” he said to him, “ and come out of this man.” The 
unclean spirit tore him violently, threw him to the ground, in 
the midst of the people, and went out of him uttering a great 
cry, but without doing him any harm. 

A movement of fear and amazement ran through the 
assembly. Everyone asked: “ What is this ? he commands 
even the unclean spirits with authority, and they obey him.” 1 

This scene is the first recorded in the Gospel narrative 
in which the sovereign authority of Jesus shows itself over 
the unclean spirit of evil, which invisibly tyrannises over 
mankind, and which visibly possesses certain men. 

In his temptation he had conquered it for himself; by 
casting out devils, he was to subdue it in others. Such facts 
must neither be suppressed nor slurred over ; it is right that 
they should be explained, for they are closely connected with 
the great question of evil, and to understand their meaning, 
according to the Gospels, we must pay attention to the 
teaching of Jesus on this point. 

No being is isolated in this vast creation ; all are linked 
together by invisible chains. 

These mysterious relations, deep and unchanging, establish 


1 Mark i. 23-27 ; Luke iv. 33-37. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 283 

the organic and living unity of the universe. Matter is 
under the dominion of an unknown force, which governs its 
transformations, its metamorphoses, its combinations, and its 
evolutions. Spirits hover around him who is the very source 
and centre of their intellectual and free activity : some, bound 
to him by love and by the sovereign will whose commands they 
fulfil ; others, alienated by rebellion, in disorder and revolt. 

Souls form a connecting link between the physical uni¬ 
verse and the spiritual universe, for on the one hand they 
animate matter, and on the other they receive direct impulse 
from the Spirit. This intermediate region is the kingdom of 
man, he is the point of universal convergence. 

Everything that is, finds an echo in him. The soul is 
under the influence of both matter and spirit; it can unite 
with matter, which it transforms, organizes and vivifies, 
and from which it receives influence. It is at the same time 
open to the mysterious action of the Spirit, for the Spirit of 
God can descend upon it, can communicate his impulse, his 
truth, his charm ; and created spirits, good or evil, can contract 
with it secret affinities, according as it lets the good or the 
evil prevail within its conscience. 

Just as bodies attracted by a common centre, which 
regulates and maintains their movements, form a system, a 
sort of family and world, so free spirits, under the influence 
of a common attraction, ally themselves to one another, and 
become as it were one mystic whole. The physical force 
which regulates matter is called attraction ; the force of attrac¬ 
tion among spirits is love and will. 

Every philosophy which loses sight of this vast uniformity 
mutilates our nature, misinterprets the drama of life, with the 
grandeur of the phenomena of which it is the stage, and its 
mighty destiny. 

According to the teaching of Jesus, evil is not merely a 
human fact which has its origin in the evil will and in heredity, 
25 


284 JESUS CHRIST. 

its occasion in the frailty of the flesh, its punishment in physical 
infirmities and troubles ; it is a fact which transcends the limits 
of our species and which must be assigned to the spiritual world 
beyond. Evil, to which mankind is a prey, has its first cause in 
the instigations of the evil spirits ; it is the result of that 
which is fulfilled in their invisible spheres. 

Man not only has an earthly nature, enslaved by his 
passions, with an egoistical and vain-glorious will which 
tends to prefer himself to all else; he himself is a spirit of 
an inferior order, subject to the evil and wicked influences 
of spirits greater than himself. 

Jesus and his apostles have clearly taught the existence 
of Satan and his legions, and their influence on man. Jesus 
speaks often of the Tempter. He calls him 6 AiafioXog (the 
Calumniator), 6 Ylovripog (the Evil One), b*'Ap\iov rwv Saipoviiov 
(the Chief of devils), 6 ’ExOpog (the Enemy), Ee^ef5ovX 
(Baal-Zebub, the name of the Philistine god which the Jews 
applied to the chief of devils), 2 arav or Sara vac (Satan), 
and ’A px iov T °v K ocrpov rovrov (Master of this world). We find 
allusions to him in the Sermon on the Mount, 1 in the Lord’s 
Prayer, 2 in the Parables, 3 in his discussions with the Pharisees. 4 
He is the strong man armed, whom Jesus comes to bind and to 
overcome. To him he attributes all great crimes,the incredulity 
of the Jews, the treachery of Judas, the blindness of the Gentiles, 
cruel maladies, demoniac possessions, and besetting sins. 

The existence of evil spirits and their interference in the 
course of human events is everywhere accepted as a traditional 
truth, in all the primitive races, Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian, 
and in all states of their civilization. It is handed down to 
us from our fathers ; it is implanted in the mind of man. 

It is an act of levity and naive presumption to merely see 

1 Matt. v. 37. 

2 Matt. vi. 13. 

» Matt. xiii. 19. 

4 Matt. xii. 24. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 285 

in this belief the product of ignorance or folly, of imposture 
or credulity. Ranged in opposition to this universal testimony 
which comprises the whole of mankind ; all its religions, all 
its philosophies, all its traditions, and all its doctrines, the 
greatest names in poetry, in science, and in religion ; we find 
only three sects : among the heathen, the Epicureans and 
the Cynics ; among the Jews, the Sadducees. To them are 
allied the materialist critic, the modern pantheist, and their 
philosophy, which whilst recognising a personal God, has 
isolated him from this world, discussing the evolution of 
mankind under the influence of physical forces, as if God did 
not exist ; an Euphemistic Atheism which reassures simple 
souls by avoiding brutal negations, but which leads to the 
same result as the most glaring scepticism or atheism. 

This last negation, which only dates from a century and a 
half ago, does not rest on any serious foundation. It was the 
outcome of audacious assertions, gratifying to our secret 
horror of the invisible world and to our scorn for the witness 
of others. Has it ever been proved that spirits do not exist? 
and if they exist, that they do not intervene in the world by our 
feelings, our inclinations, our imaginations, our passions, our 
dreams? 

Science without God, materialist and pantheist, has boldly 
declared that the supernatural phenomena with which history 
abounds ; charms, divinations, enchantments, the calling up of 
spirits, fascination, witchcraft, sorcery, demoniac possessions, 
are nothing more than the frenzy of ignorance, of imagination, 
of nervous disorders, hysteria, somnambulism, or natural 
magnetism ; 1 but science has never proved it. 

1 “Plato taught that one must recognize a world of invisible spirits 
between God and man. They maintain the harmony of the two spheres. 
They are the tie which binds together the universe. It is through them 
that all science of divination proceeds, all priestcraft relative to sacrifices, 
initiations, enchantments, prophecies, magic. For God does not manifest 
himself directly to man, but through the medium of spirits. He who is 
learned in all these things is indeed an inspired man.” (Plato, Symposium.') 


286 


JESUS CHRIST. 


No nervous affection can account for bodies suspended in 
the air in violation of the law of gravity, nor the sight of 
hidden things, nor the prediction of future events, nor the 
knowledge of strange tongues without having learnt them. 
No negative assertion can stand against these facts. They 
exist, authenticated, patent; and they set at defiance the 
science which refuses to recognise the intervention of intelli¬ 
gent beings, superior to man. 

Charlatanry, credulity, and superstition have certainly 
played a great part in these phenomena, but even if we grant 
that this part is as large as any intelligent critic could demand, 
there still remain undeniable facts which cannot be explained 
by these causes, and which can only be challenged by those 
whose minds are no longer open to conviction. This spirit 
of negation, destructive as it is in spite of its tranquil exterior, 
ill conceals the timidity of those who use it so freely. 

The history of paganism is merely a dismal manifestation of 
the works of Satan. The errors and the darkness which have 
led the mind of man astray and sullied his conscience, the 
terrible vices which devour whole civilisations, the passions 
which make man of the earth earthly, and immure him in this 
land of sorrow and death, are a sign of the incessant activity of 
the evil spirit, the prince of this world ; from him and all his 
legions arise degrading, voluptuous, and homicidal forms of 
worship, which are the cause of pagan decrepitude. 

The mysterious tempter, after having enticed the first 
human couple to revolt, continues his work through the ages, 
and this work of homicide and self-seeking, of pride and 
voluptuousness, of violence and craft, of servitude and death, 
grows and covers the earth, drawing the multitude of the 
nations, civilisations, and races within its fatal circle. It is like 
a deluge, but where shall we look for the ark ? 

To deliver mankind it is not enough to communicate a 
healing force which shall calm our passions, revive and purify 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 28 / 

our will; we must be armed and freed, armed to withstand 
the wiles of the Evil One, and freed from the yoke with which 
he oppresses us. Where are we to look for such a force ? 

It is, indeed, in the power of every intelligent and free 
being to influence by his spoken word, and during his whole 
life to impress on those who come in contact with him the 
impulse of his spirit: this is the greatest gift and the highest 
power which has been bestowed upon the creature ; but what 
is this spirit ? It is a finite energy, a light mixed with dark¬ 
ness, a weak and bounded will, with unruly and disordered 
passions. Hence the inability of man to regenerate man ; in 
communicating his spirit, he transmits the evil with which 
he is himself infected. 

The Spirit of God, alone, being above and beyond all evil, 
can work the redemption of man ; this Spirit existed in all its 
fulness in Jesus, and Jesus was the true, the only Saviour. 

This was one of the functions most eagerly looked for 
in the Messiah. Prejudices, indeed, had diminished and re¬ 
stricted it, as they had weakened and disfigured the Messianic 
ideal. In this work, men thought, only the chosen nation was 
concerned. It was a question for the Jew, not for mankind, for 
the people rather than the individual. Such was the exclusive¬ 
ness of this extraordinary race, that all the rest of mankind 
vanished before it, and the individual himself seemed absorbed 
by the superior unity of the nation. The Messiah’s words of 
salvation and deliverance had no meaning for them except from 
the point of view of their national and religious autonomy. 
An independent and victorious nation, a free, respected, and 
universally recognized worship, was all they looked for. 

Nothing was further from the thought of Jesus. Though 
sent primarily to the Jews, he knew himself to be the Saviour 
of mankind. It was mankind and not the Jews alone whom 
he would save and render free ; and even when revealing him¬ 
self to the Jews, it was to the man that he spoke, to the free 
and conscious being, to the individual, to the soul, to that 


288 


JESUS CHRIST. 


which makes all men equal in the sight of God. In this lies 
his greatness and his universality. 

The work of the salvation of man therefore implies two 
elements: the one negative, his emancipation from the 
tyranny of the spirit of evil, whose ordinary manifestations 
and instruments are to be found in that world given up to its 
rule ; in our weakened and misdirected will, and in our un¬ 
bridled passions ; the other positive, the effective communica¬ 
tion of the Spirit of God or of good. In penetrating his being, 
to the very depth of his soul, this Spirit enlightens him and 
draws him on, strengthens his will, refines his nature, and 
brings the whole man into the way of truth and virtue, into 
the peace and order of a well-regulated life. 

Though imprisoned for a time in the body which must 
suffer and die, it will one day reveal itself, when we shall 
appear immortal, transfigured, glorified, absorbed, but not 
conf ounded, in the life of God himself, in his light, his love, 
and his beauty 

This function of a deliverer and a Saviour, in the deepest, 
the most spiritual, the most mystic sense of the word, was not 
fully grasped, and was naturally neglected by those historians 
who have wished to interpret the life of Jesus, by distorting 
the sacred writings to suit materialist, pantheist, sceptic, and 
rationalist criticism. 

The demoniacs healed by Jesus, the devils, and the chief 
of the devils, Satan, who plays an important part in the life 
of Christ, which cannot be suppressed without misrepre¬ 
sentation, have been the subject of great critical discus¬ 
sions. The Gospel is full of things which baffle the under¬ 
standing, startle it, and at times provoke it. The incidents 
concerning devils are not the most startling of these 
but they embarrass a certain modern philosophy which 
regards the belief in a devil as a vain superstition, and men 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 289 

possessed by evil spirits merely as victims of physical disease ; 
and since Jesus believed in devils and cast them out of bodies 
possessed by them, recent critics have not hesitated to accuse 
him of having shared the superstitions of his time and country. 
He believed, they say, that he cast out the devils by which 
poor mad people thought themselves tormented; all that he 
did was to soothe them. 

This conclusion applied to one who never tolerated 
nor accepted the false ideas which misled opinion, is most 
unworthy ; it is an arbitrary theory besides. For philosophy 
has never proved that spirits do not exist, and science has 
never established that demoniac possession was merely mental 
alienation. Before accusing Christ of superstition, it would be 
necessary to demonstrate that the devils, whose existence he 
admitted and which he exorcised, were nothing but a dream 
of Jewish imagination. 

The cool and occasionally insulting assertion of a few 
critics in the face of universal belief, may be passed over with 
contempt. 

Some, wishing to save Christ’s character for wisdom, 
for the theory which denies the existence of devils is fatal 
to it, have devised a system of accommodation. Jesus, they 
assert, did not believe in Satan nor in his host of evil 
angels ; if he spoke of them and appeared to cast them 
out, it was merely to accommodate himself to the ideas and 
the language of the people. Ill-conceived expedient; which 
sacrifices the uprightness, the simplicity, the loyalty of his 
character, to preserve intact his reputation for wisdom. Nothing 
could be in more violent disagreement with the whole spirit 
of his teaching. It would be impossible to misunderstand, to 
depreciate, to disparage, to misrepresent, any phenomena of 
far-reaching import more effectively. 

To deny the existence of the devil is to deny the super¬ 
human origin of evil ; to deny his constant intervention in 
human affairs is to deny the most powerful cause of our 


290 


JESUS CHRIST. 


corruption ; to deny demoniac possession is to deny the 
most violent manifestation of the Tempter by whom we are 
enslaved ; to deny the cure of those whose very movements 
and bodily faculties were under the dominion of the Evil One, 
is to deny one of the divine powers of Christ. 

These are fatal errors ; they lead to the denial of Jesus and 
his Messianic work. 

When we search closely the minds of the saints, when we 
trace out the lives of those heroic souls who have followed in 
the path of Christ, and inherited his spirit, we see them in 
constant warfare, not only with their natural and selfish instincts 
but with the evil spirits, by whose furious attacks, though they 
cannot be subdued, they never cease to be tormented. 

The mass of mankind are only familiar with the works of 
Satan. The spirit of evil, to seduce them, has only to let loose 
the tempests of passion, the seductions of selfishness, and the 
whirlwinds of ambitious pride ; it is reserved for the saints to 
wrestle, in imitation of Jesus, with the dark powers of evil, 
those wicked spiritual forces 1 to whom the world has been in 
bondage since the beginning. 

Here we have the whole of a higher psychology which 
Is the living commentary of the Gospel, and which is 
beyond the power of obtuse criticism to understand. This 
domain is closed to it; let it deny the existence of this 
domain, its denials are of no value; the saints of Gcd live, 
history is full of them, and to them we must look if we would 
discern those things which the limited science of the rational 
man does not even suspect. All systems of atheism and fatalism 
falsify or destroy the true idea of evil; and hence they are 
powerless to understand him who spoke of himself as without 
sin and alone capable of overcoming evil. Whoever submits 
to them no longer feels the overwhelming pity for man 
burdened with his sins, he hears no more the loud groans 


1 Ephes. vi. 12. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 29T 

which issue from the panting breast of mankind, he hopes no 
more for universal redemption. The soul of the Redeemer 
remains impenetrable for him. He will willingly adopt in his 
life, the teachings and the moral precepts of Christ, that is 
all he can attain to; that by which moralists may resemble 
him from afar off, but not that by which Jesus has separated 
himself from all other teachers and dominates them all. 
To give wise precepts is in the power of the wise man; to 
command spirits is beyond his province, but it is by this 
means only that man can be saved and made free. Jesus has 
this power; he exalts the soul, his word drives away the evil 
spirit which tyrannizes over it, it vanquishes its evil sugges¬ 
tions, repulses its assaults, and gives to the believer the light 
and strength which draw his will into that of God. 

These are the facts to which the Gospel bears witness. To 
neglect them is to take from Jesus his most characteristic 
feature, and to bring him down to the level of the mere 
philosophers of Greece and Rome, or the Jewish rabbis. A 
hasty glance at the beliefs of the Jews of the first century 
with regard to evil spirits and the superstitious practices of 
their exorcists is enough to make us reject such an offence to 
his greatness, and to enable us to estimate how far he was in 
advance of his age, in this point as in all others. 

The existence of spirits, angels and devils; beings superior 
to man, and intermediate between God and him; is one of 
the ideas familiar to the Jewish religion. It has been sup¬ 
posed that this doctrine originated in Chaldaea and Persia, 
and that it dated from the Babylonian captivity. 

History proves the falseness of this assertion, for angels 
are mentioned in the most ancient of the sacred writings of 
the Israelites. An angel comforted Hagar in the desert; 1 
an angel destroyed Sodom and saved Lot ; 2 and Jacob, when 

1 Gen. xvi. 7. 

2 Gen. xix. 


292 


JESUS CHRIST. 


he was asleep, saw angels ascending and descending the 
mysterious ladder. 1 Most of the books which follow Genesis 
are full of analogous passages, which refer to these spirits 
above the earth, and to their numberless legions. 

Whatever development it may have received in the course 
of history, the faith of the ancients remained pure ; belief in 
spirits never suffered any injury, and the primitive dogma, 
whilst covering itself with a poetic veil of popular super¬ 
stitions, never transformed itself into legend or fable. The 
books written before the captivity often and in many ways, 
represent angels in the most glowing poetic colours : such as 
the cherubim with the flaming sword, who guarded the entrance 
of Paradise; 2 the host of heaven, which in the vision of 
Micaiah surrounded the throne of God; 3 Satan, who presented 
himself when the sons of God took counsel and who discussed 
with Jehovah the temptation of Job. 4 

The belief in devils, angels, and spirits was common among 
the Jews. The Sadducees alone did not share it; they were 
the Epicureans of this people. Not only was the existence 
of devils admitted, but their influence and intervention in life 
was believed in. Many illnesses and infirmities were attributed 
to them. They were called evil or unclean spirits, the latter 
name being reserved for those devils who led their victims to 
the tombs and unclean places. 5 It was said of certain men 
that they had an evil or unclean spirit. 

Demoniac possession should not be confused with any 
physical malady. It is not an organic or bodily disorder, 
a kind of hallucination or mental alienation, or one of the 
nervous affections, as rationalist critics have pretended in 
defiance of the sacred writings which refer to it; it is a par- 


1 Gen. xxviii. IJ. 

2 Gen. iii. 24. 

3 I. Kings xxii. 19. 

4 Job i. 6. 

6 Talmud Hieros ., Errubin , fol. 4 2, 2. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 293 

ticular condition of the mind, a psychological disorder. The 
presence of a devil in certain men neither absorbs nor yet 
destroys their personality. The individuality is indestructible 
and inviolable. God himself, who could destroy everything, 
as he has created everything, destroys nothing and does not 
allow destruction. The most violent satanic action only 
affects the organic and lower faculties, the imagination and 
the senses of the unfortunate victims ; their freewill may be 
enchained for a moment, but it only belongs to the devil when 
voluntarily surrendered. The man possessed of a devil is 
under the dominion of a spirit which tyrannises over him, 
suspends or fetters his liberty, deprives him of the normal 
control of his body and limbs, speaks by his mouth and 
deranges his feelings. The abnormal state of his faculties is 
not due to an unhealthy condition of the brain or to organic 
disturbances; it is born of the violent and disturbing action 
of a superior will; it is a result and not a cause. Hence, the 
healing of one possessed is beyond the power of medicine ; 
it can only be effected by the moral influence of one spirit 
on another. 

It is true that actual illness, as a rule, accompanied 
demoniac possession. 1 Certain senses were often paralysed ; 
the man possessed of a devil could not see, could not 
speak; he was subject to convulsions or epileptic fits: 2 
but we have no authority to confound these maladies with 
the possession itself. All that one can say after the closest 
examination of the texts, is that the mischief introduced 
into the organic life of the victim may have been originated 
by the violent action of the spirit which tormented him: so 
intimate is the connection between mind and body, that 
organic disturbances lead to mental troubles, just as mental 
troubles engender organic disorders. 


1 Matt. ix. 32; cf. Mark ix. 17-25, Matt. xii. 22. 

2 Matt. xvii. 14. 


294 


JESUS CHRIST 


Superstition and magic have played their part in these 
beliefs; they have always exercised a great influence among 
the Jews. They attached much importance to dreams, which 
they provoked by art, and they had a science for their inter¬ 
pretation, which was considered one of the noblest. Indeed, 
certain men made a profession of this science; there were, 
according to the Talmud of Babylon, 1 twenty-four interpreters 
at Jerusalem. Perhaps no other people have ever held amulets, 
magical formulae, exorcisms, and incantations in such high 
esteem. Those who were ill wore amulets hung round their 
necks, and they had various magical formulae recited to allay 
their pains and to send them to sleep. Of such formulae 
there were many kinds, according to the disease ; some were 
a protection against mad dogs, others against the demon of 
blindness. They practised witchcraft, sorcery, and the art 
of divination. They required of each member of the Sanhedrin 
that he should be versed in astrology, divination, and magic, 
so that he could judge in these matters; they recounted a 
vast number of wonders worked by their magicians, and, 
in spite of the exaggeration which always enters into re¬ 
citals of the marvellous, it is difficult not to see a glimmer 
of truth in this mass of testimony. 

Exorcism, properly so called, was held in repute. The 
most pious rabbis took upon themselves to cast out devils, 
and some attained great celebrity. 

Their most common prayer was an incantation, of which 
several formulae are preserved in the Talmud. 2 Before pro¬ 
nouncing it, the rabbi had to pour a little oil on the head of 
the sick person. There was even, according to Josephus, 8 a 
book on magic, the “ Sepher Refuot,” and tradition ascribes its 
composition to Solomon himself. One of the most efficacious 
talismans, the historian tells us, was a sacred root called 

1 Beracoth, fol. 55, 2. 

2 Sabbat, col. 6, 2; Talm. Babyl. Ioma, fol. 84; Avodat Zarah fol. 12. 

8 Ant. viii. 2. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 295 

“ baaras.” It was of the colour of fire and difficult to find, but 
the touch of it was always efficacious : the devil could never 
resist it. Exorcisms were frequent, as were cases of demoniac 
possession. 

We have no evidence to enable us to decide by what 
signs a demoniac could be recognized in those times; nor 
why there was such an increase in the number of those 
possessed in Palestine in the time of Jesus, and why they 
disappeared or diminished afterwards. These are still more 
mysterious questions. The excitement of mind, the state 
of exasperation of the people, who saw their independ¬ 
ence at an end, the extreme tension of their religious hopes 
at this crisis in their history, when their strongest passions 
were aflame, are, no doubt, the material and psychological 
conditions; but the true causes are beyond us ; to grasp them 
it would be necessary to know the laws which bind together 
the mental and spiritual worlds, and to penetrate the very 
purposes of God. 

When the Spirit of God manifests himself in the earth in 
any part of the human race, the spirit of evil rises in 
revolt and multiplies its attacks, in order to impede his 
action. It is a law of history, that the most holy among 
men, in waging war with evil, indirectly call forth the most 
violent manifestations of evil. The advent of Jesus was the 
advent of the Holy One of God, the personal intervention 
of the Spirit in his divine fulness ; and it was natural that 
it should excite the most terrible attacks of the spirit of evil 
and his legions. 

It is worthy of note, indeed, that all those demoniacs, 
whose miraculous cure is recorded in the Gospels, were drawn 
to Jesus by an irresistible force. The spirit which spoke by 
their mouth never failed to proclaim the Messianic character 
of him whose sovereign power they dreaded. This was one 
method of opposing the Prophet, for by calling Jesus the Holy 


296 


JESUS CHRIST. 


One of God, the Son of David, and lastly the Messiah, they 
aroused in the minds of the crowd those false ideas which 
attached to this title, and we know that nothing would be 
better calculated to impede the work of the true Messiah. 
Jesus commanded these unworthy voices to be silent, not so 
much because their hypocritical and perfidious testimony re¬ 
pelled him, as because he knew that reserve and caution were 
necessary to his work. He, the sovereign master of spirits, 
exorcises them ; master of the soul, he transforms it; master 
of the body, he restores its balance and health ; he only heals 
the body to save the soul; he only saves the soul by 
freeing it from the Evil One, and he only sets it free 
by communicating to it the Spirit of God. The cure of 
those possessed is only a particular case of the healing 
power of Jesus, one of the phenomena which most fully 
symbolize his great work of deliverance. 

That which struck the Jews of the synagogue of Caper¬ 
naum with astonishment in the healing of the demoniac, 
was not so much the fact itself, as the way in which it 
was performed. Such cures, it seems, were not unknown 
to them, but they were due to the virtue of the prayers, sacred 
formulae, incantations, and invocations of their exorcists, and, 
probably, more often to the accommodation of the spirits 
themselves. 

Jesus did not appeal to any extraneous force, he only had 
to speak one word ; he commanded, and the unclean spirit 
passed out subdued ejected by a superior will. 

His fame went out into all the country; the towns of the 
lake and of the mountain were roused to excitement by 
the report of the event. 

Jesus left the synagogue accompanied by his four dis¬ 
ciples, and came to the house of Simon and Andrew, which 
was near at hand. Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick 
of a fever. His disciples besought him for her; he drew 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 29; 

near, lifted her up, and took her by the hand ; immediately 
the fever left her, and she ministered unto them. 1 

The event of the morning had stirred all the little town. 
In the evening, when the sun was set, and the Sabbath day 
was ended, they brought to him all that were diseased and 
those that were possessed with devils. All the city was 
gathered together at the door, and Jesus healed many by 
laying on of hands, and he again cast out many devils who 
cried out, “ Thou art the Son of God ” ; and he rebuked them 
and would not suffer them to say that he was the Christ. 

And in the morning he arose up very early and went out 
alone to pray in a solitary place. Peter and they that were 
with him followed him afar off, and the crowd came again 
to seek him. His disciples having joined him, said : “ Master, 
all men seek for thee. 

“ And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, 
that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth.” 

This story, so full of life and yet so soberly and simply 
told by the two Evangelists, 2 whose words I borrow, gives 
us a true picture of one day’s life of Jesus in Galilee. It 
enables us to witness the apostolic work of the Master from 
hour to hour; we can follow him from morning till evening 
and see him work and live. 

Prayer was his first act. Before sunrise, when all were 
asleep, he left his house and the town and retired to a lonely 
spot, far from noise and far from men, seeking silence and 
solitude to speak in secret with his Father. 

The scenery of Palestine is favourable to meditation. The 
villages and towns are noisy, but the country is silent; when 
we leave the houses behind us we find at once the calm of 
the desert. There is no confused noise like the noise of the 


1 Matt. viii. 14-17; Mark i. 29-39; Luke iv - 3 8 '44 

2 Mark i. 29-39 ; cf. Matt. viii. 14-17 ; Luke iv. 42-44. 


29B 


JESUS CHRIST. 


sea, or the sounds which are heard in woods. Some un¬ 
heeded cries there are: the warbling of birds, the neighing 
of animals, the barking of dogs, and the crowing of the 
cock; and, in the night, the howling of jackals, and occa¬ 
sionally the call of human voices. But all these sounds 
are distinct and isolated, and lose themselves in the silence 
which pervades the valleys and mountains of Palestine, and 
add to its great melancholy. 

When the disciples joined their Master, they found him in 
prayer. Then the work of the day began ; they went into the 
villages and into the synagogues at the hour of meeting, and 
Jesus preached the Kingdom of God and thrilled the crowd 
which was gathered together to hear him. 

The house where he was receiving hospitality was soon 
invaded. All those who were sick were led to the Prophet, 
and he healed them with a word, with a look, or by putting 
his hands upon them. The numbers of those who thronged 
him were so great that he had not time to eat. 

Sometimes he returned to the borders of the lake on either 
side of the town, and entered into one of Peter’s ships. The 
crowd sat along the shore in silence, and he spoke to them 
from the ship, which was pushed off a little from the land. 

At sunset he went again to his dwelling, and even 
till night-time he was again besieged by the people. The 
halt and the blind, the deaf and dumb, the mad, the epileptics 
those who were possessed of devils, and those who were sick of 
divers diseases flocked to him. Never has anyone found him¬ 
self surrounded by a greater number of those in trouble. No 
one has ever healed more, nor felt more keenly the joy of doing 
good. His goodness and his compassion were inexhaustible ; 
he often said, “ It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 1 

His days bent under the weight of good works, as a 
tree laden with ripe fruit. Many asked him to their houses 


Acts xx. 35. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 299 

to do him honour and to hear him close at hand. His con¬ 
versation was always earnest and was full of vivid images and 
unexpected touches. Truthful souls felt themselves trans¬ 
formed by his voice ; treachery was unmasked and confounded. 

At night-time, when all retired to sleep, he still watched 
for many hours, and sometimes spent the whole night in 
prayer. The labours of his apostolic work gave him life ; 
his body, as his soul, rested on the breast of the Heavenly 
Father. 

Such was the life of Jesus during these days in Galilee, 
which were as the springtime of the Kingdom of God. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. OPPOSITION BY THE 
PHARISEES IN GALILEE. 

The journey of Jesus in the neighbourhood of Capernaum 
was of short duration . 1 Some days afterwards we find him 
again in the town. His activity was very great; within 
seven months from this time he had preached the Gospel 
throughout all Galilee and Decapolis, and had gone even 
to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and into the gates of 
Caesarea Philippi. During this first journey, he certainly 
visited Chorazin and Bethsaida. 

Bethsaida, a simple fishing village, was the home of Peter. 
It was situated on the shore of the lake, at the north-west 
point, near a little bay at the entrance of the plain of Gen- 
nesaret, and had an excellent anchorage sheltered from the 
south winds. A beautiful spring, the Ain-Tine, gushed forth 
at its gates. The road from the Mediterranean to Damascus 
traversed the village, and then branched out in two directions. 
One of the roads skirted the lake, and led, in three-quarters of 
an hour, to Capernaum; the other lost itself in the gorges 
of the mountains of Safed. There is still an old khan at 
the point of bifurcation, which was built at the entrance of the 
defiles where attack was easy, to prbtect the caravans from 
brigands. Of the ancient Bethsaida, shapeless ruins only 


1 Mark ii. i. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 301 

remain, with a wall of imperishable mortar still standing here 
and there. 

The plough has passed through the midst of these ruins, 
among stones which the lazy fellah does not even dream of 
removing. Chorazin was to the north of Capernaum, two 
miles distant from the town and lake, overlooking a wady at 
the bottom of which a rapid torrent roars in the rainy 
season. At the present day, all the hills are bare of trees. 
Blocks of basalt appear on all sides, and give to the country 
the gloomy aspect peculiar to a volcanic soil. These rocks 
obscure the view, except at one point, where, owing to a dip 
in the rocks, a corner of the blue lake is visible; a gleam 
of brightness in a district under the ban of nature. 

The ruins of the town destroyed fifteen or sixteen cen¬ 
turies ago lie in chaotic confusion. Chorazin must have been 
a garrison town, to judge by the ruins of a tower which 
appears to have been a fortress; it had also a synagogue, the 
remains of which are still remarkable and give some idea of 
its fine proportions. Lintels fallen to the ground, blocks 
hollowed in the form of marine shells, fragments and 
capitals of columns, and monolith piers, all of basalt, lie 
heaped in wild confusion. This is evidently the place where 
Jesus often preached. 

Some steps further, an old tree, a d6um, with its tufted 
branches, capable of sheltering an entire tribe, contrasts its 
vigorous vitality with the death all around. Flowers flourish 
in the midst of the ruins; grass, manured by the flocks, 
grows luxuriantly; a few Bedouins encamp in the town 
once denounced by Christ, and a spirit of desolation rests 
upon it. 

Only one fact is told us of all this journey in the villages 
bordering upon Capernaum, and this one is no doubt recorded 
because it helped to spread abroad the fame of Jesus, and 
because it forcibly struck the imagination of the crowd. This 
act was the cleansing of a leper. 


302 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Leprosy was one of the diseases most feared by the Jews, 
for they regarded it as a direct visitation of God, 1 and in their 
curses they desired it only for their worst enemies. 2 

At the outset of the disease, the priest declared the leper 
unclean, excluded him from all contact with his fellows, and 
banished him from the town in the company of other lepers. 3 
His clothes were rent in sign of grief. The solitude to which 
he was condemned was not, however, a prison ; 4 he could enter 
the synagogues of those towns which were not surrounded by 
walls, but he was placed behind a rail, which isolated him 
from the congregation ; he was the first to enter and the last 
to leave. 5 

Leprosy was considered incurable, even the white leprosy, 
which was the most common form and the least repulsive. 
When it had spread over the whole body, and the scales 
had fallen off, and the skin had become white and shining, it 
was no longer regarded as contagious: the priests could then 
declare the leper “ clean ” and restore him to liberty. 6 

He was bound to offer three sacrifices, one for atonement, 
the second as a sin offering, and the third as a burnt offering. 
The poor offered doves ; the rich, lambs. The ceremony was 
performed in one of the halls of the Temple at the north corner 
of the Court of the Women. The leper, conducted in front of 
the gate of Nicanor, the threshold of which he was not allowed 
to cross, stretched first his head, then his hand, and then his 
foot towards the Men’s Court. The sacrificing priest touched 
the lobe of his ear, his thumb, and toe with blood, whilst 
another priest anointed him with oil: he departed cleansed. 

This scourge, endemic in Egypt and the south of Asia 

1 Numbers xii. io; II. Chronicles xxvi. 19. 

2 11 . Sam. iii. 29; II. Kings v. 27. 

8 II. Kings vii. 3; Luke xvii. 12. 

4 Kelim, cap. i., ibid. 7. 

6 Negaim, xiii.; Hal., 12. 

6 Leviticus xiii., xiv. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 303 

Minor, has not altogether disappeared from Palestine: Jeru¬ 
salem, Nablous, and Ramleh have still their lepers. They 
may be seen, as in the time of Jesus, on the outskirts of 
these towns ; the skin of a shining white covered with scales, 
the ears and the nose eaten away by ulcers, the eyes fixed, 
glassy, and inflamed, the joints of the fingers hanging loose ; 
stretching forth their hands covered with bandages towards 
the passers-by, asking alms and obtruding their misery with 
wailing cries. 

It was one of these repulsive sufferers whom Jesus touched 
and healed. The Master, returning to Capernaum, descended 
the mountain, 1 followed by a multitude. He stopped on his 
way at a town where, when the evening had come and the 
multitude had withdrawn, a leper came to him, threw himself 
on his knees, his face to the ground, and besought him saying, 
“ Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” 

He was moved with compassion : taking pity upon 
such faith bound to such misfortune; he stretched forth 
his hand and touched the leper: “ I will,” he said, “be thou 
clean.” 

As soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy left 
him. Jesus dismissed him then, saying in a tone of 
authority: “ See thou say nothing to any man : but go thy 
way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing 
those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto 
them.” 

The evident nature of the malady, and the suddenness of 
the cure, wrought solely by touch and at the will of Jesus, 
gave to this deed a supernatural and miraculous character. 
Such acts were frequent, even habitual, during the public life 
of the Master. 

The disease was considered incurable, but, if it had not 


1 Matt. viii. 1-4; Mark i. 40-45; Luke v. 12-16. 


304 


JESUS CHRIST. 


been so, the instantaneous cure alone revealed in Jesus a 
divine power commensurate with his goodness. Above 
the Law, he, in spite of the Levitical prohibition, 1 touched 
the leper; such contact could not defile him, who with a 
word could wipe away all uncleanness. He did not con¬ 
tent himself with healing the unhappy man who besought 
his help, but he made him a witness, his witness. Having 
charged him not to tell the multitude, whose excitability 
he both feared and sought to restrain, Jesus sent him to 
the priests, to Jerusalem, trying again from afar to open 
their eyes, and warning the Sanhedrin that he whom 
they had threatened with death as a blasphemer was 
continuing his work, and that the Spirit of God was with 
him. 

A man cured of leprosy was one of the greatest signs that 
a prophet could produce; it recalled Moses and Elisha, 2 one 
of whom had cured his sister Miriam, and the other Naaman 
the Syrian. Nothing could contain the transports of the 
leper’s joy; he went forth and published everywhere all that 
had happened. Jesus could no longer show himself in the 
town; he was obliged to withdraw to a desert place, remote 
from human dwellings. 

He found calm and prayed amid the solitudes. 

The Messianic influence rapidly spread in Galilee, and 
throughout the whole of Palestine. Everything contributed 
to that result: the personal ascendency of Jesus, the novelty 
of his teaching, his wonder-working power, the eloquence of 
his speech, the renown of his works, his wide-reaching 
sympathy, and the over-excited state of the Galilaeans both in 
politics and religion. To all these causes we must add the 
frequency and closeness of the intercourse between all the 


1 Leviticus xiii. 

2 Numbers xi.; cf. Deuteronomy xxiv. 9. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 305 

towns and villages of the different tetrarchies and of Judaea 
with the metropolis. 

The influence of the Temple and of the Sanhedrin resulted 
in the excessive centralization of power at Jerusalem. Reli¬ 
gious observances, pilgrimages, and sacrifices, brought almost 
all Jewish families into Judaea and to Jerusalem many 
times in the year; the taxes imposed by the Temple necessi¬ 
tated a class of collectors, who travelled about the country; 
the doctrinal authority of the Sanhedrin extended over all 
the synagogues, and the members of that great assembly 
exercised everywhere a real inquisition. 

Three distinct bodies formed themselves around Jesus: 
the disciples, the multitude, and the governing class of elders 
and doctors. 

The disciples followed our Lord, living his. life, and 
absorbing his teaching and goodness. They were the chosen 
soil which he worked upon and rendered fruitful. He loved 
them with a great personal regard, he spoke to them without 
metaphor, he initiated them little by little into his purposes, 
he penetrated them with his Spirit, and made them one 
body. 

Crowds, whether in the East or West, are always the 
same : spontaneous, passive, and unable to resist the influence 
of novelty, of power, and above all, of good deeds wrought 
before their eyes. It was from these that Jesus sought and 
recruited his disciples, because among these he found simple 
hearts and upright souls. The people of Galilee, more inde¬ 
pendent of established powers, and more accessible to an 
influence which they regarded with suspicion, inspired him 
with more confidence than the people of Jerusalem. Jesus at 
once aroused their enthusiasm ; he let them come to him, he 
had pity on their sufferings, and loaded them with benefits. 
He spoke to them in parables, from tenderness for their 
difficulty in understanding the divine truth, and so as not to 


3 o6 


JESUS CHRIST 


expose the sacredness of his teaching to the misconstruction 
of the ignorant. He drew them in his footsteps to the syna- 
gogues, into the villages, across the fields to the shore of the 
lake and to the lonely hills. Seldom has a prophet called 
forth such enthusiasm ; it was a divine attraction. 

When a man stirs so powerfully a whole country, and 
strikes to the very heart of the people, opposition is never 
slow to appear. 

We shall see it grow about Jesus in Galilee, as at Jerusalem; 
and naturally it arises in the upper class, the guardian of 
traditions, in that class which has power, and which represents 
the doctrines of the day. This opposition assumes all forms : 
aggressive and insidious, it flatters and intimidates, it lies in 
wait to spy and to surprise, it attaches itself to him whom it 
would ruin, and grows with his growth; it can let loose the 
passions, it knows how to use hypocrisy and hatred; it shrinks 
from nothing that can injure, and it was to pursue Jesus even 
unto death. 

Whoever introduces new ideas, forms, and forces, has to 
contend against the old ideas, forms, and forces. Though 
man was born for progress, he refuses progress, and every 
innovation has a difficult birth. Jesus, the only divine inno¬ 
vator, was the holiest of victims. To try to improve mankind 
is to court persecution. Before renouncing a state, even 
an inferior one, and the interests which belong to it, man will 
often resist even to bloodshed ; and he will try to destroy him 
who would rouse him from his inaction. 

Jesus, prudent and reserved, full of firmness and force, 
sometimes sorrowful and indignant, was now to strive without 
ceasing against the Pharisees, to refute them, confound them, 
and overwhelm them with denunciations. 

The Gospel narrative brings out vividly this antagonism 
and the various circumstances which from day to day em¬ 
bittered and intensified it. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 307 

As soon as Jesus had returned to Capernaum , 1 he was 
assailed by the people. His absence had increased rather 
than lessened the general excitement. The report of his 
return spread rapidly, and as soon as it was known that he 
was in the house, the crowd assembled in such numbers that 
there was neither room in the house nor in the court in front. 

Jesus sat in an upper chamber 2 and preached the word. 
Near him were Pharisees and doctors of the Law, attracted by 
his growing fame. They were not all from Galilee, for some 
had come from Judaea, and even from Jerusalem ; they listened 
rather to judge than to learn. The power of God was sud¬ 
denly made manifest through an unforeseen incident . 3 

Whilst Jesus was speaking, some men brought one sick 
of the palsy to lay before him. On seeing how the crowd 
pressed, and not knowing how to bring him in, they mounted 
the outer staircase, went upon the house-top, uncovered the 
roof above the place where Jesus was, and through the opening 
thus made they let down the bed on which the man with the 
palsy lay. The energy of their fearless faith touched him: 
“ Son,” said he unto the sick of the palsy, “thy sins be forgiven 
thee.” The Scribes and Pharisees were astounded at these 
unheard-of words, but it was with horror and not with wonder. 
They held their peace, but their silence could not conceal the 
anger of their hearts. This is blasphemy, they said to them¬ 
selves. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Jesus, who 
read their hearts as an open book, knew their anxious 
thoughts. To justify in their eyes his words, the most 
remarkable, indeed, which ever fell from human lips, and 
which implied in him who dared to use them the very person¬ 
ality of God, he appealed to his calling, to his Messianic 


1 Mark ii. 

2 A Jewish house consisted usually of a ground floor and an upper 
storey. On this upper storey was the “upper chamber,” or coenaculum . 
There they retired to pray, and to consider holy things, religion, and law. 

3 Matt. ix. 2-8; Mark ii. 2-12; Luke v. 17-26. 


3oS 


JESUS CHRIST. 


dignity, which it pleased him often to designate by the 
expression “Son of Man .” 1 To forgive sins is an act ot 
divine power. If Jesus assumed this right it was because God 
was in him, because he was equal to God. 

Far from rejecting this conclusion as a blasphemy, he 
proved it by a miracle. “ What reason ye in your hearts ? ” 
he said, in watching the Scribes and Pharisees. “ Whether is it 
easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven 
thee ; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed and walk ? ” 

His questioners, rebuked, held their peace. “Ye must 
know,” said he, “ that the Son of Man has power upon earth to 
forgive sins ” ; and, turning towards the sick of the palsy, he 
said, “ I say unto thee, arise, take up thy bed and go unto 
thine house.” At these words he rose up before them, took 
up the bed on which he was lying, and departed glorifying 
God. 

There was a movement of fear in the crowd, as usually 
happens at the sight of something marvellous. 

The cry of praise to God arose at once: “We never saw it 
on this fashion,” said the bystanders. The healing of the sick 
of the palsy made a greater impression on their minds than 
did the divinity of Jesus, of which it was a striking mani¬ 
festation. Jesus was for the crowd, and probably for the 
educated, to whom it was given to see his power, merely 
a worker of miracles, a prophet; and even after this the 
Pharisees remained hostile. 

He went forth , 2 and passed by the shores of the lake, 
followed by the crowd, whom he taught as he went. But, as 
he was passing the receipt of custom, he saw sitting there 

1 This epithet, which Jesus adopted, did not give rise in the thoughts 
of his hearers to those errors which the name of Messiah always excited. 
It only implies his human origin, it means that in this descent he is the 
offspring promised to Adam, and that his supreme function, wholly 
spiritual, limits itself to bruising the head of the tempter, and thus 
setting mankind free from the tyranny of evil (Gen. iii. 15). 
a Matt. ix. 9; Mark ii. 13 ; Luke v. 27 . 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 309 

one of the tax-gatherers, a publican, named Levi, the son of 
Alphaeus. “ Follow me,” he said to him. 

This was enough. His word, which had just cleansed the 
leper, restored the power of movement to the sick of the palsy, 
and remitted sins, suddenly transformed a publican into a 
disciple ; the tax-gatherer rose, and, leaving all, followed Jesus. 

With the four fishermen, there was now with Jesus a 
tax-gatherer, one of a class greatly despised among the Jews. 
The new disciple, a short time after, made a great feast in 
his house 1 for his Master, and invited his colleagues and 
friends; so Jesus found himself among publicans and those 
whom the Pharisees called sinners. A certain number of 
these were already his followers . 2 

It was by this class, which was looked upon as sinful and 
unclean, that the good news of the Kingdom of God was most 
readily received. Jesus loved it. 

For him, the distinction of rich and poor, of educated and 
ignorant, of pure and impure, of schools and parties, does not 
exist. In his eyes all differences are obscured by the unifor- 
'mity of common needs, by the discipline of common duties, 
and by the dignity of a common vocation. He recognizes 
only two sorts of men : those who respond to God’s call, and 
those who are deaf to it; those who believe in his word, and 
those who reject it; those who walk in the narrow way, and 
those who wander in the broad road that leads to destruction. 

What he was to the little country of Galilee in those 
distant times, he is now, and always will be, to the whole 
world, to which his word still goes forth, and which he per¬ 
vades with his Spirit. Herein lies the secret of the true 
equality which overcomes the necessary and inevitable 
inequalities of this world. 

In this Kingdom, open to all, if there still remain privilege, 
it is in favour of the poor, the sick, the sinners, the humble, 

1 Matt. ix. 9; Mark ii. 14; Luke v. 27. 

3 Mark ii. 15. 


3io 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the weak, for these have one advantage over others; their 
misery. It makes them more ready to listen to Christ. It is 
easier, for his sake, to leave a custom-house or fishing-nets 
than to renounce a kingdom. 

The simple, who know their own ignorance, will listen 
more readily to the word of the Master than the wise, who are 
puffed up with their learning, and who believe themselves 
infallible; the sinner strikes his breast and acknowledges his 
own unworthiness, whilst the Pharisee is angered by the 
reproofs of his vain and trivial observances. 

The followers of Jesus in Galilee gave scandal to the 
Scribes and Pharisees. Rigid and inexorable, they did not 
associate with people who were without religious obser¬ 
vances, and whose very contact defiled them; they looked upon 
themselves as pure, and they religiously shunned all others. 

Some of their number, when they saw Jesus eating with 
publicans and sinners, could not in their indignant zeal refrain 
from protesting against this practice. Perhaps these were not 
the most hostile to Jesus, and they may even have regarded 
him as a prophet who inspired them with a measure of 
admiration and fear. Indeed, we see them mingling with the 
disciples of John, and timidly asking questions, not of Jesus 
himself, but of his disciples. 

“ Why,” said they, “eateth your Master with publicans and 
sinners ? ” 

This question betrayed jealousy and spite that the Prophet 
should prefer the company of these poor, and, as they would 
have called them, irreligious, people to their own. 

The Master, always on the watch, himself replied to the 
question addressed to his disciples : 

“ They that be whole need not a physician, but they that 
are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will 
have mercy, and not sacrifice .” 1 


1 Hosea vi. 6. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 311 

Integrity is of more value than ceremonial, and goodness 
is better than a burnt-offering. Besides, said he, to explain 
his sympathy with sinners, and to rebuke these self-righteous 
ones whose pride displeased him, “ I am not come to call the 
righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 

The whole spirit of the Gospel is in these words, in which 
he revealed himself as one “ Sprung from on high and who 
has proceeded from the mercy of God.” 

The Pharisees and the disciples of John took advantage of 
Levi’s feast to attack Jesus, and to disparage those who 
followed him. We fast, said they, in their self-satisfaction, 
we fast often and make many prayers, whilst your disciples 
eat and drink. 

The spirit of this misconceived religion, which had long 
since perverted the piety of the Jews, showed itself in this 
reproach of the Pharisees. Fasting was frequent among 
them ; the least zealous fasted twice a week, and the others 
more often, and for the most futile motives. True repentance 
was quite foreign to these fasters, who often had no other 
object than to obtain by dint of abstinence self-complacency, 
good fortune, and success in their worldly affairs . 1 

“ Leave them alone,” Jesus said in answer; “they are the 
children of the bridechamber.” 

This expression was used by John himself, and it would 
strike home to the disciples of the Baptist. “ Can the children 
of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is 
with them ? ” Now is the marriage feast, but wait: “ the days 
will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, 
and then shall they fast. 

“No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old gar¬ 
ment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the 
garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put 

1 Talmud Hierosol. in Me&llah, fol. 75 > 1 ; Kilaim , fol. 32-3. 


3i 


JESUS CHRIST. 


new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the 
wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new 
wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.” 

The observances of the law, all the Mosaic ceremonies, are 
what Jesus meant by the old garment and the old bottles; 
the Spirit with which he abounds, the doctrine which he 
teaches, are the new cloth and the new wine. The old Law is 
past, it will be transformed ; it cannot contain the Law of 
the Gospel; man enlarged by the Spirit needs a wider gar¬ 
ment. We see the dawn of the doctrine of the liberty of the 
children of God, of which St. Paul was to be the apostle. 

The Pharisees did not grasp the whole purport of the 
Master’s reply, for his words had a depth which escaped his 
immediate hearers. But they must have understood that 
Jesus placed himself above what they considered the coping- 
stone of their religion. Their narrow minds refused to admit 
the light; they hardened their hearts against it. Their 
antagonism was persistent, and grew in violence as new 
incidents occurred. 

In spite of his preference for the people, Jesus offered 
himself to all, great and small, and to the Pharisees them¬ 
selves, as soon as they called upon him. 

He had hardly finished speaking 1 when a man named 
Jairus came towards him. He must have been a Pharisee of 
some importance at Capernaum, for he was one of the chief 
rulers of the synagogue. A great misfortune had befallen 
him; his daughter, twelve years of age, was dying. The trial 
was stronger than his prejudices; he fell at Jesus’ feet and 
besought him earnestly: Master, my daughter is dying; 
come to my house and lay thy hands upon her, that she may 
be healed and live. Jesus arose and followed him, accom¬ 
panied by his disciples. 

The multitude pressed close upon their footsteps. A 


iMatt. ix. 18-34 ; Mark v. 21-43 ; Luke viii. 40-56. 




































CHRIST RAISING THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS. 
From the Painting by Gustav Richter. 














MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 313 

woman who for twelve years had been afflicted with an issue 
of blood, and had spent all her substance on physicians, with¬ 
out any being able to heal her, heard of the Prophet and 
joined the multitude behind him, convinced that if she could 
but touch the hem of his garment she would be healed. She 
touched it, and felt herself healed from that very moment. 
Jesus, knowing that virtue had gone out of him, turned 
towards the multitude, and asked who had touched his 
garments. 

“The multitude throng thee,” said his disciples to him, 
“and dost thou ask, who touched me?” He looked round* 
about. The poor woman, trembling, and knowing what was 
done in her, fell down before him, and told him all the truth. 

“ Daughter,” said Jesus to her, “ thy faith hath made thee 
whole ; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” 

While he was speaking, word was brought to the ruler of 
the synagogue that his daughter was dead, and that it was 
useless to trouble the Master further. Jesus said to Jairus : 

“ Be not afraid ; only believe.” Then he dismissed the multi¬ 
tude and his disciples themselves, and allowed no one to follow 
him, save Peter, James, and John. 

When he was come to the house he saw a great tumult. 
The mourners, with dishevelled hair, were wailing and crying 
and raising their arms, and wringing their hands, and 
uttering cries, which mingled with the shrill notes of the 
flute-players. 

Jesus entered and said to the people : “ Why make ye this 
ado and weep ? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.” They 
laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. He sent 
them all away, and led the father and mother of the damsel 
with his three disciples into the room where she was lying. 
He took her by the hand, and said to her: “ Damsel, I say 
unto thee, arise.” 

The damsel arose and walked, and Jesus commanded that 
something should be given her to eat. The parents were 


3M 


JESUS CHRIST. 


beside themselves with joy, but Jesus charged them to say 
nothing of what had passed. 

As he went out from thence, he also healed two blind men 
who were brought to him . 1 “ Believe ye,” said he to them, 
“ that I am able to do this ? ” “ Yea, Lord.” 

Misfortune makes faith easy. Jesus touched their eyes, 
and added, “ According to your faith be it unto you,” and 
their eyes were opened. “ See,” said he, as he sent them away, 
“ that no man know it.” As they went out, a dumb man, 
possessed with a devil, was brought to him ; he cast out the 
devil, and restored to the dumb man his speech. 

All these miracles produced an irresistible effect on the 
multitude. The people, with growing admiration, and with 
genuine enthusiasm, cried out, “It was never so seen in Israel.” 
But the Pharisees, who had witnessed all these miracles, and 
so could not deny them, misrepresented them by treating 
Jesus as a sorcerer,and saying," He castethout devils through 
the prince of the devils.” This blasphemy, which as yet they 
put forward with fear, was afterwards cast in the teeth of 
Jesus. To no accusation could he be more sensitive ; it drew 
from the indignation of his soul the most overwhelming 
denunciations that outraged love has ever thundered forth. 

One or two days afterwards, on a Sabbath , 2 that Sabbath 
which is called the Second-First, that is, the first of the second 
year which followed the Sabbatical year , 3 Jesus was walking 
through the corn-fields ; his disciples were with him, and as 
they were walking they plucked some ears of corn, and 
rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. This offended 
certain Pharisees, who were passing, for, as we have seen, 

1 Matt. ix. 27-34. 

3 Matt. xii. 1-8 ; Mark ii. 23-28 ; Luke vi. 1-5. 

8 Cf. Wieseler; Chron. Synop., p. 225, 353; Hamburg, 1843. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 315 

their laws relating to the observance of the Sabbath were of 
great severity. 

“ Why,” said they, “ do ye on the Sabbath day that which 
is not lawful ? ” 

Jesus replied: " Have ye not read what David did when 
he was an hungered, and they that were with him ? 1 How he 
entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, 
which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them 
which were with him, but only for the priests. Do you 
accuse David and those that were with him ? Do you accuse 
Ahimelech, the High Priest, who gave him the shew¬ 
bread ? Why then do you condemn the innocent ? ” 

Necessity knows no law of ceremony ; if it excuses some 
it also excuses others. You invoke your law which forbids 
all work ; but “ do not the priests in the temple sacrifice on 
the Sabbath day ? and yet they are blameless.” Know then 
that “the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sab¬ 
bath.” Moreover, “The Son of Man is Lord also of the 
Sabbath.” 

Jesus avails himself of the smallest incidents to enlighten 
his adversaries and to elevate their minds; he calls them 
from the letter to the spirit of the Law, and from external 
ceremonies to upright conduct. He appears so much the 
more grand and true, as his opponents show themselves more 
narrow and petty and hollow. 

In the face of his astonished adversaries, he asserts most 
emphatically his sovereign dignity and his Messianic claims. 
“ Holy though the Sabbath be,” he added as he dismissed 
them, “the Son of Man is Lord of it.” 

It is difficult to imagine anything which could more 
deeply offend the Pharisees than thus placing himself above 
the Sabbath, and at the same time above the Law, and above 
Moses. 

1 I. Sam. xxi. 1, 

27 


316 


JESUS CHRIST. 


This pretension, sacrilegious in their eyes, inflamed their 
hatred ; they were condemned to hate him whom they did not 
wish to recognize, and whose signs they obstinately refused 
to accept. The foregoing events, drawn from the Gospel 
narrative, are alone fully sufficient to explain the antagonism 
which grew up and increased day by day among the Pharisees 
against the new prophet. They followed his footsteps ; they 
watched him closely, and longed at all costs to compromise 
him. 

The following Sabbath , 1 he entered into the synagogue 
to teach. There he found a man whose right hand was 
withered. The Pharisees and Scribes, seeing his infirmity, 
raised before Jesus the question of the observance of the 
Sabbath day. It was an insidious attempt to provoke him, 
and to find a pretext to accuse him. 

With their miserable casuistry, the doctors of the Law, 
devoid of all pity, taught that it was not lawful to heal on the 
Sabbath day: they forbade the application of any remedy, 
whether of rubbing or anointing . 2 One of the axioms that 
found favour with this class, which was always mindful of 
its own interests, had modified the excessive strictness of 
the Law. “Act,” say the wise men, “with mercy towards 
the goods of an Israelite .” 3 

The rabbis, relying on this principle, permitted certain 
acts on the Sabbath day, to preserve an animal in peril. 
The lawyers asked Jesus: “ Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath 
day ? ” They knew his reply beforehand, but they wished to 
discredit him before the assembly, where their doctrine was 
held inviolable. 

Jesus made use of their own teaching, to put them to con¬ 
fusion. “ Who is there among you that having one sheep, if 

1 Matt. xii. 9; Mark iii. 1-6; Luke vi. 6-11. 

2 Maimon. in Schabbat, 6, 21. 

8 Talmud Hierosol^ loma 3 fol. 62, 11. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 317 

it fell into a pit on the Sabbath day, will not lay hold on it 
and lift it out? How much is a man then better than a 
sheep.” Then he said to the man with the withered hand, 
“ Arise, and stand up in the midst; ” and he arose and stood 
up. 

Jesus then said to the Pharisees, “ Is it lawful to do good 
or evil on the Sabbath day, to save life or to destroy it? 
answer me.” They were silent. Jesus, sorrowing at their 
blindness, gazed on them with anger. “ Stretch forth thy 
hand,” said he to the sick man. He stretched it forth, and 
immediately his withered hand was restored whole. 

Their minds were not enlightened by this miracle; it served 
only to put them to confusion, and their confusion turned to 
venom. Nothing can conquer the obstinacy which wilfully 
turns from the light: fanaticism is blind. The religious 
errors of the Jews in the time of Jesus make us smile, 
but they were for them the most perfect code of morality: 
it was sacrilege to touch it. The compassionate wisdom of 
Jesus, and his wonderful miracles, rather exasperated them 
than dissipated their prejudices. 

After this scene, which so vividly pourtrays them, the 
Pharisees, more irritated than ever, met in council and 
considered how to destroy Jesus. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

While the opposition of the educated classes and the rabbis 
took shape and gathered force, disciples flocked to Jesus in 
ever-increasing numbers. Many came to Capernaum, from 
Galilee and Peraea, from the towns of Decapolis and from 
Jerusalem, from Judaea and Idumaea, from Tyre and Sidon, 
from Phoenicia and from Syria. There was a general move¬ 
ment throughout the country. People did not wish merely 
to see and hear him, the sick thrust themselves upon him to 
touch him, and they were healed at his very touch; his 
power shone forth in good deeds. 

He was obliged to hide himself, so much did the multitude 
throng him. In order to escape from them, he told his 
disciples to keep a boat always in readiness, when he was 
travelling along the lake . 1 

At the sight of the people his heart was moved with pity, 
for he saw that they were weary, and scattered abroad as 
sheep without a shepherd. He compared them to a field of 
corn. 

“ The harvest truly is plenteous,” said he to his disciples, 
“ but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord 
of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his 
harvest -" 2 

1 Mark iii. 9. 

8 Matthew ix. 36 38. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 319 

During these days he went out to the mountains to find 
greater peace, and he spent a whole night on one of them in 
solitude . 1 

The name is not mentioned in the Gospels, but a very old 
tradition points to Djebel Koroun-Hattin . 2 It is a solitary 
height, about three hours’ journey to the west of Capernaum. 
It rises above the wide tableland which traverses the highway 
from Acre to the Lake of Tiberias, and commands the en¬ 
trance to the ravines of the Wady El-Haman. The two 
peaks, which crown it, and which have given it its name , 3 
are separated by a narrow ridge. 

Between their steep sides, which are covered with broken 
flints, lies a turf-grown valley, which seems designed to contain 
a multitude that one wishes to gather together and to isolate. 
They close the horizon on the north and south, so that the 
sky only can be seen. The summits are bathed in light, 
and all around lies the cultivated plain, one mass of verdure, 
or at the time of harvest an expanse of corn-fields, a sea in 
which Koroun-Hattin rises as a little island. On the north, 
the snow-clad Hermon towers majestically into the boundless 
sky. To the east, in the background, lie the lofty table¬ 
lands of Djaulon, the ancient land of Gilead, and the pic¬ 
turesque chain of Hauran, whose white crest appears like a 
delicate floating mist In the foreground lies the lake of 
Gennesareth, whose waters assume every variety of tint, in 
response to the ever-changing light. 

The hillsides are covered, in spring, with the same ane¬ 
mones, with the same asphodels; with the same lilies whose 
white array Jesus admired ; and there still pass against 

1 Matt. v. 1; Luke vi. 12. 

2 Robinson, who seems to take pains to upset all local traditions, 
places the Mount of the Beatitudes in the heights which overlook the 
plain of Gennesareth. He has been followed by Toliick ( Anlegung der 
Bergpred. nach Matth .) 

3 Horns of Hattin. 


320 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the sky the same birds, gay and heedless, which the Heavenly 
Father feeds, though they neither sow, nor toil, nor reap. 

Jesus passed the night on the mountain in prayer, medi¬ 
tating on one of the most important steps in the development 
of his work. 

The disciples and the crowd followed in his footsteps. 
At daybreak he called together a certain number of his 
disciples : they came to him, and he chose whom he would. 

There were twelve, grouped two by two ; their names have 
been carefully preserved by the first three Evangelists . 1 
First, Simon, who was called Peter, and, with him, his brother 
Andrew; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, 
whom he called Boanerges, “ The sons of thunder ”; Philip 
and Bartholomew ; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James 
the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus ; Simon the Canaanite ; 
and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. 

There was not one rich man among them, nor a scribe, nor 
a doctor, nor an elder, nor a ruler of a synagogue ; they were 
all men of no account, unknown even in their own small 
province. Not one of them had studied ; the most educated 
was the publican Levi, the only one perhaps who knew how 
to write ; the others were boatmen, or artisans like their 
Master. They had nothing, these children of the people, 
neither fortune, nor knowledge, nor influence, and yet Jesus 
chose them as his apostles. 

“ I will make you fishers of men,” he had said to Simon, 
and he kept his promise. He had told his disciples to pray to 
the Heavenly Father to send labourers into the harvest, and 
he himself had prayed all night: the Heavenly Father heard 
his Son, and these were the labourers of the first hour. 

The twelve, henceforth, will never leave Jesus. His Spirit 
1 Matt. x. 2-4; Mark iii. 16-19; Luke vi. 14-16 ; Acts i. 13. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 321 

will be in them and over them, it will be their strength, their 
knowledge, and their power; they will preach the word of 
the Kingdom, and, for a sanction to their apostolic calling, 
they will have power given them to heal all infirmities and 
sicknesses, and to cast out devils in the name of their 
Master. 

All human means, political sagacity, brute force, eloquence, 
and wealth, were disregarded. No such daring attempt is 
known to history; to save the world, Jesus relied on his 
Spirit alone; and to make apostles, he had only to imbue them 
with his Spirit. As soon as the choice was made, he came 
down from the summit of the mountain with the Twelve and 
halted in the plain a little below ; 1 the band of his disciples 
and the multitude, who were waiting, gathered round him. 

His heart glowed ; the work of the Kingdom of God had 
reached a more exalted stage. The newly-chosen apostles 
rejoiced with a holy joy; for the gifts of God have the power 
to stir the heart and elate the spirits. Jesus sat down, his 
heart warmed, and he opened his mouth and began to teach, 
and, lifting up his eyes on his disciples, he cried : 2 

“ Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. 

“ Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be com¬ 
forted. 

“ Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. 

1 The apparent discrepancy between the narratives of St. Matthew 
and St. Luke disappears of itself. The Sermon took place, in point of 
fact, on the mountain, as St. Matthew says, but below the summits of 
Koroun-Hattin, on a plateau {iirl tottov ntdivov) or a plain, as St. Luke 
says, which separates them, but forms part of the hill. 

2 Most critics have treated the Sermon on the Mount as an artificial 
composition, made up of the scattered lessons of our Lord which St. 
Matthew collected. This idea may be correct, and it does not impair the 
truth of the doctrine. However, there seems to me an air of probability 
in a scene of such solemnity as that depicted by the first and third evan- 
gelists—a scene where Jesus in one day promulgated on the mountain 
the whole of his doctrines to his disciples, now his apostles. 


322 


JESUS CHRIST. 


“ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righte¬ 
ousness : for they shall be filled. 

“ Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 

“ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

“ Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called 
the children of God. 

“ Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ 
sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven .” 1 

Never yet was presented the ideal of happiness, for which 
the human heart thirsts, in such thrilling beauty. Happi¬ 
ness is only to be found by participation in the Kingdom of 
God. Whoever looks for it elsewhere, in riches, in earthly 
joys and pleasures, in human approbation and glory, looks 
in vain: he prepares for himself bitter disappointment, 
hunger of soul, the tears of anguish. But to be comforted 
by the Heavenly Father, to be satisfied by him, to be par¬ 
doned by him, to see him, to become his son, and to feel 
him reign in us: this is to possess the earth, this is to gain 
eternal and boundless happiness. 

The only road whereby we can enter the Kingdom, is by 
renunciation of the things of the world, by choosing poverty 
and humility, by holding fast to nothing. None may possess 
the Kingdom of Heaven unless he be humble and meek, and 
unless he have no other will than the will of the Father. 

Heavenly joys are reserved for those who have wept, and 
the fulness of the soul for those who hunger and thirst aftei 
righteousness. He who would earn the pardon of God must 
himself show mercy; he who would see God must be pure 
in heart; he who would be called the child of God must be 
a peacemaker, he must hold aloof from violence, must still 
hatred and calm the passions, and make brotherly love reign 
among men, as among the children of the same Father in 


1 Matt. v. 2 ; Luke vi. 20. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 323 

heaven. Thus, that which would seem the negation of life, 
becomes its very condition and security. 

Poverty, humility, tears, persecution for righteousness’ sake, 
the generous sacrifice of our rights, the rejection of all that 
disturbs the purity of the heart, the love of peace, the meek¬ 
ness that denies itself all violent resistance; persecution in this 
world, where the strong are always ready to crush the weak and 
to outrage justice—this is the road that leads to the Kingdom. 

The disciples had already taken the first steps ; they left 
all to follow their Master, and they were now learning from 
him gentleness and goodness ; their hearts were purified and 
they felt, through intercourse with him, the hunger and thirst 
after true righteousness, and they put away violence in 
the presence of him whom the prophets called the Prince of 
Peace ; they had already felt persecution, and the sect of the 
Pharisees, on his account, pursued them with its hatred. 

Therefore, Jesus dwelt on the happiness of those who are 
persecuted for righteousness’ sake. 

“Yea, blessed are ye,” said he to them, “when men shall 
revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil 
against you, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: 
for great is your reward in heaven.” 

Jesus no longer spoke as a man, but as the Son of God. 
He is very Righteousness: to suffer for his sake, is to 
suffer for righteousness’ sake, and to win God. 

“ Besides,” added he, “ persecution is the lot of the prophets. 
You are treated as they were.” He spoke to them of their 
great apostolic mission and of their duties. 

“Ye are the salt of the earth,” said he, “but take heed 
lest you lose your savour. Salt that has lost its savour is 
good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under 
foot of men. Ye are the light of the world : men do not 
light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, 
so that it may give light to all that are in the house.” 

Thinking of the future of his work and of his disciples, 


324 


JESUS CHRIST. 


who were now countless in number, he compared them to a 
city set upon a hill, like that city which is to be seen from 
Koroun-Hattin, on the summit of the hills of Safed. The 
mountain is Jesus himself. A city so built cannot be hid. 

“ Let your light so shine before men, as a torch in the 
house, that they seeing your good works may glorify your 
Father which is in heaven.” 

Jesus, both in his teaching and conduct, distinguished the 
Law and the prophets from the human traditions, which had 
been added by the doctors and the schools, especially since 
the time of Ezra. He submitted himself to the Law, but he 
would not be fettered by the traditions which he judged, and 
often condemned, which he rejected as an unnecessary burden. 

The Pharisees, who confused the two, could not forgive 
this assertion of independence. They accused him of up¬ 
setting the Law, and they treacherously spread abroad this 
calumny among the people ; they strove to discredit his 
work, and to impede his action, by opposing the new Master 
to Moses. 

Jesus, to forewarn his disciples, maintained before them the 
sanctity of the Law and the prophets ; he was not come to 
destroy, but to fulfil; he was no revolutionist, but a divine 
reformer; the Law which he proclaimed, was to fulfil that 
which was begun, and make perfect that which was imperfect. 

“ No,” said he in a tone of authority, “ I am not come to 
destroy the Law or the prophets: I am come to fulfil them. 
For verily I say unto you, heaven and earth shall not pass 
away till the Law is fulfilled, even to the last letter, even to 
every jot and tittle ; and whosoever shall break one of these 
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be 
called the least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whosoever 
shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in 
the Kingdom of heaven.” 

All his conduct confirmed his words. His whole life, both 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 325 

public and private, had no other aim than to realise the Law 
and the prophets, even to the last letter ; and, until the Old 
Law was realised in its fulness, he would not proclaim the New 
Law of the Kingdom. 

The Old Law is a dead letter, engraved on stone; the 
New is the living Spirit, his own inspiration. The one exerts 
its influence from without, the other from within ; the one 
makes slaves, the other free souls ; the one terrifies, the other 
inspires love ; the one is without impulse, the other gives 
strength, even the strength of God ; the one lays stress upon 
forms and symbols, the other touches the substance, the 
reality ; the one promises, the other realises the promise : 
in one word, the Old Law asks relative perfection only; the 
New demands absolute perfection. 

“ Except your righteousness,” said Jesus, in addressing his 
disciples, “ shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

And he set himself to explain to them, by various ex¬ 
amples, and with reference to certain commandments of the 
Law, the imperfection and error, the formalism and self-will, 
the blindness and egotism, which betrayed themselves in the 
traditions of these hypocritical doctors, who affected such 
zealous devotion, and merely spoke of righteousness. 

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 
Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger 
of the judgment; and he shall die the death .” 1 The 
Scribes had discussed the question of murder, the various 
cases where it was permissible, and the various penalties 
by which it should be punished ; but they stopped at the 
crime itself, and neglected the unseen cause from which it 
springs. “ But I say unto you, Whosoever is angry with his 
brother shall be in danger of the judgment of God ; whoso- 


1 Exod. xx. 13; Deut. v. 23. 


326 


JESUS CHRIST. 


ever shall say to him, Raca , 1 shall be in danger of the San¬ 
hedrin ; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger 
of hell fire.” 

In the casuistry of the Pharisees, manslaughter was left 
to the judgment of God; murder fell under the jurisdiction 
of the Sanhedrin, which punished it with death, and in 
certain cases added tortures or indignities to the capital 
punishment. The executed criminal was burnt in the valley 
of Gihon (Gehenna), a place held in abhorrence by the Jews, 
because in former times their fathers had sacrificed there 
and offered their children to Moloch . 2 

By applying these various penalties to inward anger, to ex¬ 
pressions of contempt and insult, Jesus wished it to be under¬ 
stood that he condemned not only the outward and brutal act, 
but even the word and the hidden thought which prompts the 
word and leads to crime. All evil brings punishment, and 
justice demands that the punishment should be in proportion 
to the fault; sin will not be punished by man alone, but it 
will be avenged by God himself, for it stains the soul of which 
God alone is the judge. 

Therefore “ when thou bringest thy gift to the altar and 
there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, 
leave there thy gift and first be reconciled to thy brother, and 
then come and offer thy gift.” 

Yes, “ Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou 
art in the way with him, lest at any time he deliver thee to 
the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou 
be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no 

i “Raca,” in the Hebrew Reck, a popular expression, very much 
used besides by Hebrew writers, and which implies a certain contempt. 
It has the sense of Ktvov and designates a worthless fellow. 

M wpt. It is a grave mistake to render this word by the Latin expression 
siulte, and the French insensi, fou . It occurs often in the book of 
Proverbs, and always signifies a depraved soul, deprived of all spiritual 
sense, and all but reprobate. 

% Cf. Tabn. Hierosol ., Bava Kama , fol. 5, 2. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 327 

means come out thence, until thou hast paid the uttermost 
farthing .” 1 

As, in sins of temper, sin originates in anger and has mur¬ 
der for its outcome, so, in the case of concupiscence, the sin 
begins with the guilty desire and leads on to adultery. 

The Scribes and Pharisees only considered the visible evil; 
Jesus struck it at its root: “Ye have heard that it was said 
by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery : but 
I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust 
after her hath committed adultery with her already in his 
heart.” 

Evil desire is provoked by opportunity : therefore Jesus 
commanded men to flee from temptation and to cast it away, 
in words of inexorable severity : “ If thy right eye offend 
thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for 
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy 
whole body should be cast into hell. 

“ And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it 
from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast 
into hell.” 

The Master concedes nothing to the lower passions ; he 
insists upon absolute purity. The guilty love for a woman, 
even the smallest secret desire, must be subdued. Jesus 
makes this the basis of holiness of life and freedom of spirit. 
The indissolubility of marriage was revived by Christ in all its 
rigour. Without directly blaming the divorce permitted by 
Moses, he condemned the abuse of it, which, with the con- 

1 The small coins current among the Jews in the first century were: 
the denarius (a penny), equivalent to about ninepence of our coinage ; the 
meah , or sixth of the denarius ; the pondion , or half-meah ; the as, or 
half-pondion ; the semissis, or half-as ; the quadrantes (farthing) or half- 
semissis; the firutah (mite), in Greek “ lepton,” or half-farthing. There 
are, therefore, ninety-six quadrantes in a denarius. ( Talmud Hierosol ., 
Kidduschin , fol. 58, 4; Maimon., Schekoiin, ch. i. 


328 JESUS CHRIST. 

nivance of the Scribes, had crept into practice, and degraded 
marriage to a polygamy in disguise . 1 

M It hath been said,” he added, “ Whosoever shall put away 
his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement,” implying 
that an act duly drawn up rendered any repudiation lawful 
and right. “ But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put 
away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,” in spite of 
the writing of divorcement, “ causeth her to commit adultery : 
and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth 
adultery.” 

It is plain that Jesus does not sanction divorce, but only 
separation. The marriage contract was to be governed hence¬ 
forth by justice, and woman, protected by justice, was to escape 
from the tyranny, violence, or caprice of man. 

One of the religious deviations of the Jews was their 
teaching concerning oaths. The Law said, “ Thou shalt not 
forswear thyself .” 2 The doctors held to this with rigour, 
troubling themselves little about the hastiness or vanity of 
oaths, but only looking to the truth of that which was sworn. 

They even attributed a false piety to the multiplication 
of oaths on all occasions . 3 They swore by God and by his 
creatures, but the oath by the creature did not seem to them 
valid. Their casuistry admitted strange limitations, dictated 
by interest; to swear by the Temple and the altar was not 
binding with them ; but to swear by the gold of the Temple, 
and by the gift on the altar, bound the conscience. 

1 The school of the sage Hillel was of deplorable laxity; it taught 
that the woman who put too much salt into her husband’s food, or 
ournt it, ought to be repudiated. The more rigid disciples of Schammai 
restricted this power of repudiation to the case of adultery on the part of 
the woman. Cf. Talm . Hieros ., Gittin. 

2 Levit. xix. 12. 

3 It is right to mention that some rabbis opposed this custom, but not 
in the same spirit that Christ did. They merely saw in it a danger, a 
temptation to perjury. “ Be not immoderate,” they said, “ neither in 
oaths nor in laughter.” Tract. Dein ., ch. 2. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 329 

No doubt these doctors were of opinion that the gold 
thrown in the “ schouperot,” and the food offered in sacrifice 
had acquired, by becoming the property of the priests, a more 
sacred and inviolable character. Jesus, with a word, put aside 
all these subtleties, and directed the conscience towards ideal 
perfection. It is not only perjury that must be avoided, but 
useless oaths. 

“ Swear not at all: neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne : 
nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem ; 
for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear 
by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or 
black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : 
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil .” 1 

The use of oaths implies a want of confidence among men ; 
it supposes that he who makes the oath distrusts the others, 
or that the others distrust him. If one believes the word of a 
man, there is no need to call upon God as a witness, in the 
ordinary affairs of life. Those who love one another have 
faith in one another ; the disciples of Jesus love one another, 
and they have no need of oaths. An oath, for them, would be 
merely a solemn affirmation of the truth, a testimony to the 
veracity of God, who cannot err, and to the frailty, the nothing¬ 
ness of man, whose word is always, even with the most holy, 
subject to error. 

A harsh and terrible law weighed on the whole of the 
ancient world; on the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, 
and the Romans, as well as on the Jews ; the lex talionis. It 
is mentioned in all the codes. Before the time of Jesus, 
Sakya-Muni alone spoke of gentleness. 

In the mind of the legislator, this law of iron had for its 
aim the restriction, the mitigation of just vengeance ; it was 

1 In Maimonides ( Peak , ch. 5) there is a timid reproduction of the 
sublime teaching of Jesus. “ Every transaction” says the rabbi, “ among 
the disciples of the wise, should be governed by truth and confidence- 
The formula is, ‘ Yes, yes ; no, no.’ ” 


330 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the bridle of the human animal; but if it struck terror into 
the evil-doer, it encouraged and stimulated, in individual inter¬ 
course, that instinct of retaliation which is so natural and so 
strong in the offended. The traditions of the doctors had 
substituted a pecuniary fine for tortures, with the view of 
mitigating the severity of this pitiless law; but they left un¬ 
touched the principle on which the law was based. Jesus 
tempered justice with mercy, and, in the individual intercourse 
of men, he discountenanced all spirit of vindictiveness, even 
under provocation. 

“ It hath been said by them of old time, An eye for an 
eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not 
evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn 
to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the 
law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. 
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him 
twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 
would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” 

This is how Jesus converts the tiger into the lamb ; he 
did not condemn lawful defence, nor the right of punishment, 
but he raised himself above these, and showed to his disciples 
the ideal gentleness. Above the natural law of the natural 
man, he established the law of the children of God. He 
wishes us to yield to the evil-doer, and not to offer resistance, 
for resistance can only subdue him, gentleness may convert 
him; for gentleness makes martyrs, and martyrs have often 
touched the heart of their tormentors. This is true conquest 
and the highest strength. By this divine sign we may recog¬ 
nise the disciples of him who submitted his body to those 
who struck him, his cheeks to those who smote him, who 
turned not away from blows and insults, and who was sacri¬ 
ficed without resistance and without a protest, even as a sheep 
before her shearers is dumb . 1 Such divine teaching has 


1 Isaiah xlix., liii. 7. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 331 

begotten, and still begets from day to day, Christian martyrs ; 
heroes of perfect gentleness; wherever it penetrates, it converts 
the sword into the cross ; man no longer seeks to avenge 
and to kill, he learns to forgive and to die. 

He who does not love, he who has not been transformed 
by the Spirit of God, may perhaps admire the sublimity of 
such teaching, but he will not understand it, for its very 
essence is perfect love. The law of love, in which all 
others are contained, was formulated by Jesus. Neither 
the Gentiles nor the Jews penetrated its depth, for neither the 
one nor the other learnt to love their neighbour, they did 
not even understand who was their neighbour. 

For the Gentiles, the stranger, the barbarian, was an enemy; 
for the Jews, the Gentile was hateful; whilst the Scribes, the 
strict doctors, more narrow even than the Gentiles, only called 
an Israelite, and a pious Israelite, their neighbour ; the heretic, 
the sinner, the Samaritan, were held in abomination; they 
despised them, they hated them. Their piety could not 
exist without hatred ; to hate was a duty. 

Jesus wished to clear away these fatal errors: “Ye have 
heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, 
and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute 
you ; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in 
heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye ? 
do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye do good to 
those who do good to you, what reward have ye ? do not even 
the publicans the same ? And if ye lend to those from whom 
ye hope to receive again, what reward have ye ? Sinners 
also lend, to receive as much again. And if ye salute your 
28 


332 JESUS CHRIST. 

brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even 
the publicans so ? ” 

“To you I say, Love your enemies, do good, and lend 
without hoping to receive again. Be ye therefore perfect, 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Love 
has found its ideal expression on the lips of Jesus. The best 
among the wise men said, “ Listen to thy conscience ” ; Moses 
said, “Be obedient to the commandments of Jehovah, thy 
God, for he is terrible”; the Jewish doctors, “ Respect the 
traditions of the Fathers and the ‘hedge* raised by them 
around the sacred laws ” ; Jesus said to his disciples : “ Con¬ 
science may lead you astray, the law is a yoke for slaves, the 
traditions of the elders are full of error. ‘ Be ye perfect even 
as your Heavenly Father is perfect.’ Let his example be your 
law ; his Spirit, your strength. Your Father is good : be ye 
good also ; he loves evil-doers, his enemies : do as he does, 
love your enemies.” 

All these masters, whose whole talk was of righteousness, 
and who bore themselves proudly as the guides of the people, 
were to Jesus as blind men ; it was to them he referred in the 
short and significant parable, where he declared them incap¬ 
able of leading others. “ Can the blind lead the blind ? shall 
they not both fall into the ditch ? The disciple is not above 
his master. He must strive to be perfect as his master .” 1 

Motive is one of the essential elements of true righteous¬ 
ness, for it is the main-spring of our acts ; if the motive is 
bad, it corrupts the act; if pure, it elevates it. Unless the 
motive is good, the best acts are but as vices, they have only 
the outward show of good. The man who does them has 
the appearance of virtue, but in the sight of God he is only a 
hypocrite. 


1 Luke vi. 39. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 333 

Jesus requires of his disciples that their motives shall be 
as pure and as exalted as their actions. The greatest sin and 
one most difficult to eradicate, is a secret pride. Man loves 
himself more than he loves God ; he ever seeks his own 
glory, and pursues it, in his incurable vanity, even in his 
works of religion and piety; he desires to be seen, ap¬ 
plauded, and extolled. Even those who profess holiness 
do not escape the subtle poison of self-love, and in their case 
we meet with the more refined forms of pride. 

The strictest Pharisees are an example. To be seen of 
the crowd, to be called masters, and to be thought righteous, 
was the vice which Jesus never ceased to unmask and to de¬ 
nounce, and against which he forewarned his disciples. “Take 
heed that ye do not your good works before men, to be seen 
of them : otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which 
is in heaven.” 

He desired that we in doing good should forget all, both 
ourselves and others, and look only to the Father. “ Hide 
yourselves,” one of his disciples afterwards said, “remain 
unknown of all, in order to be better known of God .” 1 

“ Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a 
trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues 
and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I 
say unto you, they have their reward.” They seek their own 
glory, they have found it; let them be satisfied with their vanity. 

“ But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know 
what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms may be in secret,” 
only for thy Father, “ and thy Father which seeth in secret 
himself shall reward thee openly.” 

The strict Pharisees were ostentatious even in their 
prayers. They might be seen standing in the synagogues, 
muttering aloud their phylacteries, and even stopping in the 


1 Cf. II. Cor. vi. 9. 


334 


JESUS CHRIST. 


public way, and at the street corners, and in the market¬ 
places at the prescribed hour, to say their long forms of 
prayer. They loved to make a show. Jesus forbade this 
hollow display of piety. “When thou prayest thou shalt not be 
as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the syna¬ 
gogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen 
of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 

“ But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and 
when thou hast ,shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in 
secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee. 

“ But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the 
heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their 
much speaking. 

“ Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father 
knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. 

“ After this manner therefore pray ye : Our Father which 
art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 

“ Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is 
in heaven. 

“ Give us this day the bread for our subsistence . 1 

“ And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 

“ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil. Amen.” 

This is prayer in its ideal, necessary, and absolute form. 
Thus the children of God speak to their Father : it is the 
voice of perfect love, which loves God and desires his King¬ 
dom and his glory ; the expression of confidence in him who 
nourishes every living creature; the cry of gentleness which 
pardons and which hopes in return the mercy of the Father ; 
the ardent aspiration of those, whom evil threatens and tyran¬ 
nizes over, and who have faith in deliverance. 


1 The adjective hriovmov, derived from tm-ovaia, for the substance, for 
the life, clearly indicates the bread necessary for subsistence, and not 
the bread for to-morrow, as certain commentors assume, wrongly in our 
opinion. Cf. Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae , ad h. loc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 335 

Let these things come to pass, and all will be perfect. 
There will be no more evil, nor hatred, nor hunger, nor dis¬ 
order on the earth, but blessing and love, and joy and life, 
and peace and concord, in a word heaven ; God in man, and 
man in God. 

Such is the teaching of Jesus. His soul has passed into 
these words, which express for us in human language the 
unutterable groanings of the Spirit 1 in every conscience, which 
has felt his inspiration. 

Vanity intruded itself also into the frequent fasts which 
were in fashion among the Pharisees. They had not only 
increased their number, but they had intensified them ; they 
forbade all ablution and all use of ointment; they covered 
their head and face with ashes , 2 and made a parade of 
austerity to gain the admiration of the people. “ Do not 
imitate them,” said Jesus to his disciples. “ Be not, as the 
hypocrites, of a sad countenance ; for they disfigure their 
faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say 
unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou 
fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou 
appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in 
secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward 
thee.” 

Jesus insists on the divine motive which should govern 
our acts and consecrate our duties. His disciple should not 
look to the world, nor to men, nor to any created thing. No 
more egoism, nor self-love, no more vain joy and glory ; the 
Father only and always : it is to him alone we must look, and 
for whom we must act; he is hidden in our conscience and in 
the depths of our being, but he sees, he hears, he rewards, he 

1 “ Quid oremus, sicut oportet, nescimus ; sed ipse Spiritus postulat pro 
nobis gemitibus inenarrabilibus.’ > (Rom. viii. 26.) 

2 Taaniih , c. 2. 


33<5 


JESUS CHRIST. 


blesses. Those whom he sees are in the light, those whom he 
hears have strength, those whom he rewards and blesses have 
already a foretaste of his Kingdom and his glory. 

Jesus wished to raise and to turn the hearts of his disciples 
to this divine realm, the heaven where the Father dwells ; for 
just as motive is the mainspring of our acts, so love inspires 
and rules all our motives. Man is of the earth, covetous, 
greedy for gain, insatiable for riches, hungry for the pleasures 
of to-day, eager to enjoy them, to possess them, to heap them 
up ; and these vain desires ruin and enslave him. Jesus will 
have us poor in spirit, untrammelled by these vanities, wholly 
belonging to God, the inexhaustible and secret source of our 
being, our life, our strength, and our joy. 

“ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where 
moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through 
and steal : but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, 
where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, 
there will your heart be also.” 


He compared love, and motive guided by love, with the 
eye, which gives us light . 1 The eye is the light of the body, 
motive is the eye of the soul. “ The eye,” said he, “ is the 
light of the body : if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole 
body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is 
in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ! ” 

There cannot be two supreme loves. “ No man can serve 
two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the 


1 A current expression among the Jews. The ‘‘good eye” signified 
the generous soul; the “evil eye,” the avaricious soul. “ Let him who 
gives,” say the Talmuds, “give with a good eye ; let him who makes an 
offering make it with a good eye.” (Talmud Micro sol., Bava Bathra y 
fol. 14, 4.) 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 337 

other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. 
Ye cannot serve God and mammon .” 1 

It would be a mistake to read in the words of Jesus a con¬ 
demnation of worldly activity, the source of public and private 
prosperity ; he only condemns that inordinate love of the 
luxuries of this life, which enervates work, and the licence of 
selfish pleasure. In recalling man to the love of the Father, 
he but tempers him anew in the fount of all energy ; he sets 
him free and exalts all his powers. 

No more vain cares henceforth ; in becoming the child of 
God, man develops a child-like trust. There is no need for 
man to trouble himself, for he has a Father who watches, and 
who watches in secret. The soul of Jesus overflowed with this 
filial trust. 

“ Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, 
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your 
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, 
and the body than raiment ? 

“ Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do 
they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father 
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they ? 

“ Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto 
his stature ? 

“ And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider the 
lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do 
they spin : and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 

“ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not 
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? 

“ Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, 
What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? 

“ For after all these things do the Gentiles seek,” those 
who do not believe, those who do not love the heavenly 

1 An expression of Syro- Chaldaic origin, which signifies riches, perhaps 
hoarded up, secret riches ; in Hebrew, matmon. Cf. Reuss, Hist . Evangel 
ad h. /. 


338 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Father ; but as for you, you have your Father, and “ he 
knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 

“ Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteous¬ 
ness ; and all these things shall be added unto you. 

“ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the 
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof .” 1 

This love of the Heavenly Father, which inspired Jesus and 
his disciples, is the inexhaustible source of gentleness and 
tranquillity. The man who feels that he is loved of God is 
softened in heart, he loves as he is loved, he becomes humble 
and good, he thinks no ill, he does not judge ; he sees his own 
moral needs rather than those of his brother. 

“ Judge not,” said Jesus, “ that ye be not judged. 

“ For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged : 
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you 
again. 

“ And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s 
eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? 

“ Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
mote out of thine eye ; and, behold, a beam is in thine own 
eye ? 

“ Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own 
eye ; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote 
out of thy brother’s eye.” 

Goodness is not, however, to be blind. It should have 
tact, and discernment for the needs of others, and reverence 
for God who sustains and enlightens it; it should be prudent 
and reserved, and should husband the divine gifts. This is 
its gentle safeguard against the animal part of our nature, 

1 In the Talmud (Babyl. Erachin , fol. 25) there is a maxim of a wise 
rabbi, Elfezer, which has a suggestion of the Gospels: “ He who has 
food in his basket, if it be only a mouthful, and who says, ‘ To-morrow 
what shall I eat ?’ is a man of little faith.” 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 339 

which is devoid of reverence, unbridled, aggressive, and un¬ 
clean as dogs and swine. 

It was by these strong images that Jesus depicted the soul 
carried away by the violence of its passions, despising truth, 
profaning love, and resisting the Spirit. 

“ Give not,” said he to his disciples, “ that which is holy 
unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest 
they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend 
you.” 

Nevertheless, Jesus does not demand a supine and passive 
trust. The love of the Father does not suppress, but rather 
stimulates spontaneity and initiative, and enlarges their 
sphere ; it breathes into the soul noble desires which call 
forth ardent prayers. Man relies on himself to realise his 
petty schemes, but the children of God put their trust in the 
Father, whose work they do, for they know that all strength 
without him is in vain, and that nothing befalls but by his 
will. 

In order that they should have this strength, and should 
enter into the purposes of God, Jesus said yet further to his 
disciples : “ Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye 

shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 

“ For everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that 
seeketh, findeth; and to him that knockcth it shall be 
opened. 

“ Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, 
will he give him a stone ? 

" Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent ? 

“ If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto 
your children, how much more shall your Father which is in 
heaven give good things to them that ask him ? ” 

The Father refuses nothing to prayer inspired by the 
Spirit and sustained by faith. The prayers of his children 
arouse the love and even the will of God. 


340 


JESUS CHRIST 


One simple and divine command of Jesus contains the 
whole of our duty towards man ; all human duties are com¬ 
prised in it: “ Whatsoever ye would that men should do to 

you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and the 
prophets.” 

“ Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned ; forgive, 
and ye shall be forgiven ; give, and it shall be given unto 
you ; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and 
running over.” 1 

After having set forth these great principles of conduct, 
Jesus exhorted his disciples to be faithful and to beware of 
false prophets. He warned them against mere sentiment, 
which does not lead to good works and to sacrifice, and he 
revealed to them the invincible strength of those who should 
found themselves upon his word as upon a rock. 

“ Enter ye in,” said he, “ at the strait gate : for wide is the 
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and 
many there be which go in thereat: 

“ Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which 
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

“ Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s 
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 

“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? 

“ Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a 
corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 

“ A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a 
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 

“ Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn 
down, and cast into the fire. 

“ Wherefore by their fruits,” that is to say by their works, 

“ ye shall know the false prophets.” 


1 Luke vi. 37, 38. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 341 

Fruitfulness is the sign of the tree which God has planted, 
and of the prophet whom he sends. 

“ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the Kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
will of my Father which is in heaven. 

“ Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we 
not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name have cast out 
devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? 

“ And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : 
depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” 

Jesus is the only Master, the only judge ; this he declares 
solemnly. We must listen only to him, and every living 
creature will be judged by him. He is the tree of life ; the 
false prophets are the baneful tree, whose fruit is poison. His 
doctrine is eternal, unchangeable ; it is the rock on which we 
must build. 

“Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth 
them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house 
upon a rock : 

“ And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not: for it 
was founded upon a rock. 

“ And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and 
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which 
built his house upon the sand : 

“ And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell: and great 
was the fall thereof.” 

Gentile wisdom and Jewish morality are here surpassed. 
What the one saw, as through a glass darkly, Jesus made 
plain ; what the other only sketched, he completed. No 
teacher before him .but had conceded something to human 
frailty, and to evil. Jesus wanted no compromise; he gave 
the final word for righteousness and holiness. He alone has 


342 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the right to exact perfection, and to command heroism ; for 
he alone communicates to frail conscience the energy of God; 
he alone delivers mankind from the passions which tyrannise 
over it, from anger and lust, hatred and vengeance ; he teaches 
gentleness, austerity, goodness, love; he transplants man from 
the soil where he languishes and dies, and takes him purified 
to the Father who is in heaven, and who alone can give him 
felicity and everlasting life. 

Sorrow is no longer an obstacle; it is a means. Those 
who renounce all shall possess God ; those who suffer shall be 
the happiest, the gentle and meek the strongest; the perse¬ 
cuted shall be the victors ; those who hunger after right¬ 
eousness shall be satisfied, and the hearts pure from all 
selfishness and lust shall see God. Sacrifice is the lever 
which will lift up the world. It is the overthrow of human 
wisdom. 

This is the legislative work of Jesus in its absolute beauty. 
Here is a monument which towers above all else, and which 
raises Jesus above all other teachers. The critic bows dis¬ 
armed before its perfect harmony, the superhuman boldness 
of its design. And the monument has grown with time : 
Jesus is now reverenced and admired by mankind as he was 
then by the people of Galilee, and man is directed and 
encouraged by him, his path marked out, his goal made 
plain. He is the pyramid erected in the midst of the 
moving sands of the desert of man’s pilgrimage. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE JOURNEY TO NAIN. 

The Sermon on the Mount stands in the public life of Jesus 
and in the fulfilment of his Messianic office as an act of 
absolute authority. As a legislator and as a Master, depen¬ 
dent on no one, he has dictated his law to every conscience, 
formulated his precepts, and inculcated his Spirit He did 
not command in the name of God, as a simple prophet, 
he spoke in his own name ; he did not repudiate Moses, he 
supplemented and went beyond him ; but he thrust aside the 
traditional teaching of the doctors, and brought against it a 
terrible indictment; he spoke of himself as the only Master, 
and to him alone must we listen. 

This attitude aroused the hostility of the official world, to 
whom the new Prophet appeared a mere agitator, and hostility, 
snares, and threats increased in proportion as his work developed; 
it was part of the purpose of God that it should grow in the 
midst of strife and by strife. 

But the Heavenly Father granted to Jesus some days of 
peace ; he had in his train some pure and trustful souls, who 
consoled him for the opposition of his enemies by making a 
demand on hisdivine power, and by giving him the only joy 
which he ever sought for among men : to heal the sick, to 
console the afflicted, to save sinners. 

Jesus went down from the mountain, followed by the 
crowd, who had rejoined him at Koroun-Hattin, and who 


344 


JESUS CHRIST. 


had been roused to enthusiasm by his words ; he returned 
to Capernaum, where, however, he only made a short sojourn. 

There was, in the town, a centurion, probably a Roman 
soldier, in the service of Herod Antipas, 1 who had won by his 
generosity the sympathy of the Jews, and who showed besides 
an ardent zeal for their religion. He was a good and upright 
man. 

One of his servants, whom he loved greatly, lay dying, 
sick of the palsy. He had heard Jesus spoken of; and the 
healing of the son of another centurion, of the man sick of the 
palsy, of the man with the withered hand, and the raising of 
the daughter of Jairus from the dead, and many other miracles, 
had given him confidence. He sent a deputation of elders to 
Jesus, no doubt the rulers of the synagogue, to beseech him to 
come and heal his servant. These urgently entreated him, say¬ 
ing, “ Do not refuse ; he deserves that you should do this for 
him, for he loves our nation, and he has built us a synagogue.” 

Jesus went with them, and as he approached the house, 
the centurion saw him surrounded by his followers. The 
sight of the prophet evoked in him a feeling of reverence 
blended with fear, and he dreaded to receive him in his 
house, so he sent some of his friends to say, “ Lord, trouble 
not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldest come 
under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall 
be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers 
under me ; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to 
another, Come, and he cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, 
and he doeth it.” 

Jesus stopped, full of astonishment. The humility and 
trust of this Gentile touched him. 

“ Verily I say unto you,” he cried, “ I have not found so 
great faith, no, not in Israel.” 


1 Matt. viii. 5-15 ; Luke vii. 1-10. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 345 

His thoughts, which always extended far beyond the 
immediate present, pictured in this man the whole Gentile 
world, which was to do honour to him, whom the Jews 
should reject. 

“ Many shall come,” said he, “ from the east and west, and 
shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the 
Kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall 
be cast out into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth.” 1 

Then, replying to the friends of the centurion, “ Go and 
say to the centurion, that it shall be done unto him as he has 
believed.” 

On their return to the house, the messengers found the 
servant healed. 

A great joy was in store for Jesus the next day. He left 
Capernaum, took the road from Damascus to Joppa by Tabor 
and the plain of Jezreel, and after one or two days’ journey he 
came to a little town called Nain, at the foot of Djebel-Dahy. 
His disciples accompanied him, and the multitude, as usual, 
followed his steps. As he was approaching the gate of the 
city, 2 a funeral procession met him. The man to be buried 
was an only son, and his mother was a widow. She was 
accompanied by a crowd of people. 

Jesus was distressed at the sight of this woman, and her 
tears moved him to pity. 

1 Man, if without the pale of the Kingdom of God, is in the night of 
error and in the torments of evil. A perpetual feast with Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob was among the Jews a popular image for heavenly felicity. 
This symbol was a favourite one with Jesus. He made many allusions to 
it both in his sermons to the crowd, and in familiar converse : “ I will not 
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine,” he said a little before his death, 

««until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” 
(Matt. xxvi. 29 ; Mark xiv. 25.) To be cast out of the bright, decorated 
banquet-hall into the cold and freezing night symbolised reprobation and 
supreme misery. 

2 Luke vii. 11, &c. 


346 


JESUS CHRIST. 


“ Weep not,” he said to her. 

Then he approached the bier on which the dead man lay, 
with his face uncovered, and he touched him. The bearers 
stopped, and Jesus said in a loud voice : 

“Young man, 1 say unto thee, Arise.” 

The dead man raised himself, sat up, and began to speak. 

And Jesus, says the Evangelist, in words of deep meaning 
and exquisite tenderness, gave him to his mother. The dead 
man belonged really to him, who had brought him to life, and 
who had only made him his to give him back again to his 
mother. There was a shudder of fear in the crowd, and then 
a burst of joy and thanksgiving, and some cried out, “ A great 
prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited his 
people.” 

The power to express their feelings in the vivid phrase 
born of truthful emotion belongs to the people. The educated, 
blinded by their learning and hardened by their narrow pre¬ 
judices, let the lightning of God pass them by, without seeing or 
understanding it; but the people, simple of heart, and keenly 
responsive, are awed by the miracle ; they bow down in 
silence before the presence of the Omnipotent, and they 
glorify his goodness. 

This is the second time that Jesus raised from the dead. 

As the Father has the power of life, so also has the Son. 

The prophets sometimes exercised power over death, in 
the name of God, and in the name of Jesus, but they were 
rather the occasion than the instrument of the miracle, they 
asked God to intervene and to manifest himself; but Jesus 
has power over life and death ; he spoke as a Master, and 
death was obedient to him as to God. 

His power was always at the service of his goodness, and 
his boundless goodness was always at the service of man. All 
that dies can come to life again at his word, and in this world 
of death, where death has been sown by sin, Jesus, by destroy¬ 
ing sin, has made life germinate. This young man of Nain is 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 347 

a symbol of those unnumbered souls for whom the Church 
mourns, and whom the voice of the Saviour daily recalls to 
the life of God. 

Nain is only a miserable village of poor, dirty, ragged 
fellahs, who live in hovels even more sordid than them¬ 
selves. Among the ruins of the primitive village may be 
distinguished the ruins of two mosques, which were once 
Christian chapels. 1 Nopal-bushes with their spreading green 
boughs surround the dingy houses, and from among them there 
rises a small, pure white church. This is the spot where Jesus 
brought to life the son of the widow. 

The miracle at Nain made a great sensation in all the 
country round, and in the whole of Judaea; no miracle had 
produced a greater effect. Opinion seemed overpowered and 
conquered : it was plain that God was at length manifesting 
himself; he was with his people, and the Prophet of Galilee 
was his messenger. 

The report of these events was not long in reaching the 
ears of John the Baptist. News spreads in the East across 
scattered and novelty-loving populations with extreme 
rapidity. If there was anyone in the nation who might be 
expected to follow the career of Jesus with a breathless 
interest, it was the captive of Herod. No one was waiting 
with more impatience for the coming of the Kingdom, 
which he had proclaimed as at hand. From the depths of 
his captivity, in the fortress of Machaerus, he lived in spirit 
with him whom he had pointed out as the Chosen One ; he 
followed him and watched his growing fame. Prisoners were 
not then cut off from all intercourse with the outside world ; 
those most severely treated, even those who were kept in chains, 
were allowed to receive visits from their family and friends. 

1 Cf. Victor Guerin, Descript, de la Palestine. Galilee , vcl. i., p. 179. 

29 


34 § 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The disciples of John went in and out, giving him full 
accounts of the work of Jesus, and keeping him informed of 
the state of public opinion. 

Nothing is more depressing to a soul consumed with zeal 
than to see itself reduced to inaction. John felt this in his prison. 

He knew that the life of the Messiah was toilsome, and 
that he had already encountered a violent opposition from 
the Pharisees, priests, and elders; and yet he could no longer 
do anything to help him in his work. To this suffering was 
added a keen trouble, more cruel even than his forced inaction 
and his forebodings of his approaching end, arising from the 
doubts felt by his own disciples concerning Jesus, and their 
jealousy and persistent mistrust towards him. These feel¬ 
ings, which had already shown themselves before his captivity 
had progressively grown in strength. The supreme revelations 
of God, his love for Jesus, the knowledge of his Messianic 
mission and of the new Kingdom, in a word, all the purest 
conceptions of his spirit, had failed to penetrate their minds. 
In spite of all his efforts, he found them still narrow, stiff, 
and jealous, and ready to make common cause with the 
enemies of his Master. Not only did they reproach the 
disciples of Jesus with their want of strictness and ceremony, 
but they would not recognise in Jesus the Messiah of the 
prophets. Even the striking miracles which they had seen 
did not convince them. 

After all, things remained much as they were: the 
Kingdom of the people of God did not appear, and Jesus 
gave no sign that he was thinking of this necessary restora¬ 
tion, indeed he seemed rather to ignore it and condemn it; if 
he were indeed a messenger from God, it was still possible 
that he was not the triumphant Messiah. The disciples of 
John stumbled at these difficulties, and the admonitions 
of the prisoner did not succeed in calming or undeceiving them. 

For his part, his faith knew no eclipse ; he was not to be 
counted among the undecided and the fickle. The Spirit, 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 349 

which had chosen him from his mother’s womb, never left 
him ; he never knew doubt or showed inconsistency. The 
divine voice which he had heard repeated to him the name of 
the well-beloved Son, the name of the Lamb that taketh 
away the sins of the world. He knew that the victim would, 
at the last day, become the great judge, and, in the humble 
guise of a man, he saw in Jesus him who holds the winnowing- 
fan in his hand. Imprisonment had never shaken the convic¬ 
tions of the prophet. Those who are persecuted for righteous¬ 
ness’ sake do not stray from God ; rather they are uplifted by 
him and strengthened in his might. 

Faithful and heroic to the last, John found in the grief 
which he felt at the attitude of his disciples, an inspiration 
worthy of his noble character. He called two of his disciples 
and said to them, “Go to Jesus and take him this message: 
* Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? ’ ” x 
John, in his powerless position, was ready to efface himself. 
That which he could not accomplish, Jesus would knowhow to 
do ; and he gave him by this message a supreme testimony 
of confidence, and an opportunity to declare his Messianic 
character. 1 2 

We are not told in the sacred writings where our Lord 
was when the messengers of John came to him. 

1 Matt. xi. 2-19; Luke vii. 18. 

2 This interpretation of the message of John agrees with the almost 
unanimous tradition of the Fathers and doctors, with the exception of 
Tertullian and Justin. (Tertul., De Baptism ., ch. x. 1 . iv.; Coni. 
Marcion., c. xviii.; Just., Quaest. xxxviii. ; Ad Orthodox.) 

Rationalistic criticism naturally disputes it, and contends that John 
had grown weak in faith and doubtful of Jesus in his prison. Such an 
idea raises two unanswerable objections: one drawn from the character 
of John ; the other from the express witness of Jesus. One of the strik¬ 
ing characteristics of the Baptist was his firmness. Such natures as 
his are not weakened by trial, but rather strengthened; and if the 
prisoner of Herod had vacillated in his convictions concerning the 
Messiah, how was it that Jesus chose the very moment of his failure to 
exalt him above all the prophets to call him the true Elias ? 


350 


JESUS CHRIST. 


At the moment when they joined him, Jesus, surrounded 
by the multitude, was healing the sick, casting out devils, and 
giving sight to the blind. The messengers came through the 
crowd to him, saying, “John the Baptist has sent us to you 
with this message, * Art thou he that should come, or do we 
look for another ? * ” 

The answer was firm and decisive. 

“Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear 
and see : The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, 
and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Then he 
added a word of sorrowful warning, addressed to those who 
were resisting these signs : “ Blessed is he, whosoever shall not 
be offended in me.” 1 

The question propounded by John to Jesus called forth a 
formal declaration of his Messianic character. Every effort 
of the Forerunner of Jesus during his life was concentrated on 
this one point; his one ambition was to lead the people to 
recognise Jesus as the Messiah. On the point of death, he 
was absorbed with the thought which had dominated and 
illuminated his life, and he asked of Jesus himself the testi¬ 
mony which was to consecrate his career, to convince his 
refractory disciples, and to rally them once for all on the side 
of the Master. The answer of Jesus, though brief and reticent, 
was finally and triumphantly clear; it gave in a few words 
the irrefutable signs of the true nature of the Messiah, and it 
contained, in a gentle form, a supreme warning. 

The signs of the Messiah were the miracles. Isaiah said 
in definite terms, which Jesus borrowed of him: “ God him¬ 
self will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind 
shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be un¬ 
stopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and 
the tongue of the dumb sing. 2 The Spirit of the Lord is 

1 Luke vii.; Matt, xi 

2 Is. XXXV. 






THE VALLEY OF THE JORDAN, NEAR EL RIHA, THE MODERN JERICHO. 





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 351 

upon me ; he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto 
the poor,” 1 

There was nothing worldly, nothing national, nothing 
political in his work ; he was not troubled about the libera¬ 
tion or the human glory of a nation, but about the salvation 
and the deliverance of mankind. He appealed to no worldly 
power. God alone, in his infinite goodness, was the hidden 
source of blessing ; the poor in spirit, who believe themselves 
nothing and who have nothing, were the chosen people in 
whom his goodness took effect, and who welcomed the good 
news. 

These simple words, “To the poor shall the gospel be 
preached,” alone proclaim the audacity of the enterprise. 
Human wisdom, with its pretension to speak to the chosen 
few, and its inability to touch the simple, was confounded. 
What reason has not been able to do God will accomplish. 
His light which reveals everything, from the want of man 
to the secrets of God, will shine on every conscience; and 
its rays will be the more piercing in proportion as the soul 
is more lowly and humble. Intellect is nothing, the heart 
is everything. Behold the sublime equality of the Kingdom 
of God! In the nothingness of our need God visits us, 
and the humblest, those most convinced of their own insig¬ 
nificance, are the first, the most holy, the only great. 

The outward poverty of Jesus, his apparent powerlessness, 
his humble condition, his attitude with regard to the obser¬ 
vances of the Pharisees, his repudiation of every political and 
worldly element in his work as Messiah, his sympathy and 
goodness to the poor, the publicans and the sinners, the 
assertion of his right to the title and to all the functions of a 
purely spiritual Messiah : all these things scandalized many 
of the educated and of the most influential, rigid, and 


1 Is. xvi., lxi. 


35 ^ 


JESUS CHRIST. 


patriotic of the Jews. The disciples of John were among 
the number. These offended feelings grew from day to. day ; 
death and the cross put their seal upon them, and they were 
destined to extend throughout the ages. Those minds which 
only believe in their own wisdom, those which are wedded 
to their own systems, slaves to their preconceived ideas, 
eager to enjoy and intent only upon that which perishes, 
they will not recognise the signs of the Saviour; they will 
turn from him, calling the wisdom of God folly, and the 
secret strength which wins the lowly weakness. 

To such men Jesus said, in warning and in lamentation : 

“ Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in 

__ >> 

me. 

The disciples of John withdrew. 

As soon as they were gone Jesus began to speak of their 
master to the people who surrounded him. There were in the 
crowd some Scribes and Pharisees, and it was possible that 
some would give an interpretation to the message offensive 
both to Jesus himself and to John. He defended his fore¬ 
runner to the people in a discourse full of energy; he praised 
his firmness , 1 his austerity, and his prophetic grandeur. 

“ What went ye out into the wilderness to see ? ” he said 
to the crowd. “A reed shaken with the wind?” No, John 
was no reed. The crowd could not question his energy, his 
vehemence, his inflexible courage, his resolute character, his 
love for justice; these qualities recalled the oak which does 
not bend rather than the pliant reed. 

“Then,” continued Jesus, “What went ye out into the 
wilderness to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ? ” The 
austerity of the Baptist had impressed the people even more 
vividly than his energy. He was still in the imagination of 
the people, with his raiment of camel’s hair and his girdle 
of leather, the type of an ascetic ; he had not the slightest 


1 Matt. xi. 7-19; Luke vii. 24-35. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 353 

resemblance to those courtiers among the Pharisees and 
Sadducees, who clothed themselves in sumptuous garments 
to fawn upon princes. 

“ They do not live in the wilderness ; they must be sought 
under fretted ceilings and in kings’ houses.” 

“ Then,” cried Jesus, repeating the question with increasing 
emphasis, “ What went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? yea, 
I say unto you, and more than a prophet.” He not only 
prophesied as others did, but he had himself been prophesied. 
His coming was an event which the prophets had foretold. 
“ For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my 
messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before 
thee. 

“Verily, I say unto you, Among them that are born of 
women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.” 
The others only perceived the Messiah from afar; he saw 
him with his own eyes ; he showed him to the people, and pre¬ 
pared the way for him. But, notwithstanding his greatness, 
“ the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he,” for, 
incorporated with the Messiah, he partakes of the fulness of 
the Spirit, and enters into the joys of the Kingdom of 
whose advent John had been the constant witness. “The 
Law,” with its symbols, all “ the Prophets,” with their oracles, 
“even to John,” who was the chief among them, prepared 
the way, announced and foretold the long-expected King¬ 
dom ; and “from the days of John even to this day, 
the crowd thrusts forward to enter the Kingdom and the 
violent take it by force. The gate is narrow, and must be 
stormed . 1 

“ And do not say that the Kingdom of God will not come 

1 The expression ( 3 idKtrm indicates the violence suffered by the 
Kingdom of Heaven from those who thrust themselves forward to seize 
it and who appropriate it as booty. The words dpTrafyvoiv civti)v 
(iiaarm are an allusion to those generous souls among the publicans and 
sinners who obtained the Kingdom by the strength of their repentance 
and faith. 


354 


JESUS CHRIST. 


until after Elias has appeared, as the prophet Malachi 
foretold ; for if you would understand the hidden meaning, 
the Elias which was to come is John. 

“He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” 

The report of the words of Jesus must have reached 
the ears of the prisoner, and we can imagine his indescribable 
joy, in learning that these words concerning him had fallen 
from such lips. 

All the people, publicans and sinners, by receiving the 
baptism of the Forerunner, had justified God’s wisdom and 
had forwarded his purposes ; whilst the Pharisees, thinking 
themselves above reproach, and rejecting the baptism of John, 
had despised his counsels in their hearts. 

The same thing happened with regard to Jesus. The 
poor, the insignificant, and the sorrowful, hastened to him, 
receiving his teaching and claiming his benefits; but the 
learned, the elders, and the rulers, hardened in their formalism, 
and immovable in their traditions, were offended; they 
resisted and argued and closed their hearts. This pride, 
their self-righteousness, their self-complacency, were in his 
eyes the great obstacle to the Kingdom. To show this 
proud spirit in its true light and to confound it in 
the Pharisees, his own adversaries and those of John, he 
said: “But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is 
like unto children sitting in the markets, playing at weddings 
and funerals, and who say to one another, We have piped 
unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned unto 
you, and ye have not lamented. John came, neither eating 
bread nor drinking wine, and you say, He hath a devil. 
The Son of Man comes eating and drinking, and you say, 
Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend cf 
publicans and sinners.” 

Both these things offend you: austerity and simplicity 
of life. “ But wisdom is justified of her children.” 

A touching scene proved it, for all the words of Jesus are 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 355 

verified. His teaching and his deeds, blended together with 
divine art, throw light the one upon the other. 

A certain man named Simon prayed Jesus to come and 
eat with him at his house . 1 He was one of those Pharisees, 
who, not recognizing the Prophet as the ideal Messiah of whom 
their religion taught, regarded him with mistrustful curiosity. 
Jesus was received without any mark of honour ; no water 
was brought to him to wash his feet; no kiss was given ; no 
oil was poured upon his head. He entered as an ordinary 
guest, went -to the table, and reclined on one of the couches, 
which were placed, according to custom, for the guests. 

“ And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, 
when she knew that he was at table in the house of Simon, 
entered into the room where all the guests were . 2 

“ She brought an alabaster box of ointment. She came 
to Jesus and stood behind him at his feet, and began to wash 
them with her tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her 
head, and kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. 

“ Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, 
he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a 
prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman 
this is that toucheth him : for she is a sinner. 

“Then Jesus, answering his thoughts, said unto him, 
Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. Master,” replied 
Simon, “ say on. 

“ There was a certain man which had two debtors: the 
one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when 
they had nothing to pay he forgave them both. Which of 
them will love him most ? 

“ Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he 
forgave most. Jesus said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged- 

1 Luke vii. 36-50. 

2 See Appendix R : The Two Anointings . 


356 


JESUS CHRIST. 


“ Then turning to the woman, who was kneeling at his 
feet, he said, Seest thou this woman ? I entered into thine 
house, thou gavest me no water for my feet; but she, she 
hath washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the 
hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but she, since 
the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My 
head with oil thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath 
anointed my feet with ointment. 

“ Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, 
are forgiven : for she loved much : but to whom little is 
forgiven, loveth little. 

“ Then Jesus said to the woman, Thy sins are forgiven. 

“ And they that sat at meat with him were astonished, 
and filled with horror, and they murmured within themselves, 
Who is this that forgiveth sins ? ” 

" But Jesus said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee ; 
go in peace.” 

This sinner, whose name has been withheld by the Evan¬ 
gelist, through a sense of delicacy and reserve, has been recog¬ 
nized by almost unanimous tradition as Mary Magdalene. 

She was a member of a rich family. Her brother Lazarus 
possessed great wealth at Jerusalem ; her sister Martha lived 
at Bethany, and she herself had lands in Galilee and lived on 
the western shore of the lake at Magdala : hence her surname 
Magdalene. We are not told whether she was free, married or 
a widow. Of her youth only the memory of her sins has been 
preserved. She was one of those who are carried away by 
their heart and by passion, and who sacrifice everything to 
them, even honour. Her life of shame was notorious. 

Two women of that time, both princesses, the one a 
Gentile, the other a Jewess, Julia the daughter of Augustus, 
and Herodias, were notorious throughout the world, the former 
for her unbridled licentiousness, the latter for her incest. The 
fallen woman, beyond restraint, braves public opinion in order 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 357 

to avenge herself on those who despise her. Vices grow 
and beget vices; mad loves engender vanity, pride, jealousy 
anger, voluptuousness with all its refinements, and self-indul¬ 
gence with all its indolence. 

The Evangelist reveals by a strange expression the abyss 
to the bottom of which Mary Magdalene had fallen. “ It was 
she out of whom went seven devils.” She bowed under the 
secret yoke of the powers of evil, though no outward 
disorder betrayed their presence. We may call this a kind of 
invisible possession, not less formidable than bodily possession, 
for it yields up our senses to the violent and overpowering 
suggestions of the spirit of evil. 

The number of those who are thus enslaved is very great. 
No human will is able to set them free; it would be shattered 
in pieces in a conflict with forces stronger than itself. The 
Spirit of God alone has the power to effect these prodigious 
deliverances, in comparison with which physical miracle is as 
nothing. The passions, even when indulged, cannot satisfy ; 
and the soul hungers after God with groans and tears. The 
sinful woman had known this anguish and this void ; she must 
have crossed the path of the Prophet who was stirring the 
heart of Galilee. Perhaps she had heard him speak to the 
crowd, and it is even possible that Jesus had already the 
friendship of her brother Lazarus, and had received hospitality 
from Martha at Bethany, whilst Mary Magdalene was leading 
her life of pleasure. 

His words assuredly found an echo in her heart; they had 
power to touch even her wretchedness. The teaching of the 
Master seemed to be made for her. Some of his words would 
strike straight to her conscience and to her heart. He said that 
he was sent, not for the just, but for sinners ; he spoke of the 
lost sheep and of the joy in finding it again. And it was he 
who said, “ The publicans and the harlots shall enter the king¬ 
dom of God before the Pharisees.” She knew the tears and 
the sorrows of her life of passion ; and these words of Jesus, 
“ Blessed are they that weep, for they shall be comforted,” 
seemed addressed to her. 


353 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Nothing has more power over the soul, burdened with the 
weight of its faults, than the gentleness which sympathizes, 
and the voice which pardons. The kindness of the Master, 
his goodness and his mercy, were well known ; but God had 
never shown himself in a more tender light, the beauty of his 
character had never been seen in a more touching form. 

We do not know what passed in the soul of Mary Magda¬ 
lene, nor the nature of her inward conflicts. We do not know 
how the divine ray, which was to save her, penetrated her 
conscience. But a day came when her eyes were opened, and 
she recognized in Jesus the Saviour who pardons. On that 
day she hesitated no longer. Such natures as hers do not stop 
half-way; their greatness is shown in pressing onward to the 
goal with all their strength, whether for good or evil. She 
wished her repentance to be as open as her sin. He who 
loves does not stay to reason; he is obedient as a slave to 
the feeling which rules him ; and this woman, who braved 
opinion to follow her earthly passions, once more set it at 
nought to throw herself at the feet of Jesus. 

Having heard that he was invited to the house of Simon 
the Pharisee, and feeling herself urged by an irresistible 
force; she longed to confess to him her sorrow, she burned 
to express her repentance and her sorrow, her love and her 
faith, and to hear words of mercy and pardon. No one knew 
of the drama which was the very crisis of her life ; she was 
still to all a lost and fallen woman. 

She entered, veiled and silent, not even seeing the dis¬ 
dainful looks of the guests who, in their sanctimonious pride, 
were offended and shocked at her presence. She went and 
stood behind Jesus, holding in her hand a box of alabaster 
filled with ointment. 

The greatest honour which could be paid to a man, 
or a prophet, in the East, was to break one of these fragile 
vessels and to pour the precious contents upon his head 
and feet. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 359 

Mary said nothing, for silence is the sign of an overflowing 
heart; no word escaped her lips; she was overcome by 
her sorrow and by the love that God had shown her. But in 
her attitude of humiliation, her tears, her kisses, her streaming 
hair, there was an eloquence that is beyond the reach of 
words. 

She sees in Jesus not only a prophet to be revered, but the 
Son of God to be adored. She does not come before him, as 
the multitude, to beg for earthly benefits ; she comes to im¬ 
plore him who can heal and purify and transform the 
soul. Never did repentance shed such tears; never had 
repentant love such tenderness and such longing after pardon ; 
never did tears and perfumes symbolize such lively faith, such 
intense devotion. In Mary Magdalene may be seen the 
perfect type of the convert; and he by whom such feelings 
were inspired and welcomed is no mere man ; under the form 
of humanity he is the incarnation of beauty and infinite 
goodness. 

We see this clearly by his words. They show us how he 
identifies himself with the good, that is, with the God who is 
offended and who pardons, the God who welcomes the repen¬ 
tance of the wounded heart and makes It whole. His divinity 
shines out resplendent; he inspires a love which is the love of 
God himself, the love which covers a multitude of sins. The 
man in him is effaced, and the transfigured sinner beholds and 
adores God himself in his unspeakable mercy. “ Thy sins are 
forgiven thee,” he said. “ Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in 
peace.” 

To forgive sins is the privilege of God only. It is faith 
in God alone that saves the lost soul, and it is beyond man’s 
power to give pardon, as it is to give peace. Jesus only can 
say these things and bring them to pass. Those alone can 
understand them, who, like Mary Magdalene, have heard and 
proved them in the depth of their conscience; the rest, who, 


360 


JESUS CHRIST. 


like the Pharisees, neither believe nor love, are offended in their 
blindness, and murmur at it. But Jesus is justified of his 
elect. 

Henceforth, the sinner can take courage ; his wretchedness 
is no longer beyond hope. Evil has found a master; man 
has only to believe and repent to overcome it. Low as we 
may have fallen, we have tears and faith still left us; let 
us imitate the sinner Mary, and fall weeping at the feet of 
Jesus. 

Tens of thousands of souls have arisen from degradation 
in the footsteps of the sinner of Magdala. She has thrown 
open the path, and leads on the procession of the converted 
and restored among women. She personifies mankind, once 
lost in vices, which has found at the feet of Jesus that God 
whom she should love, and whose love transfigures her, 
and gives her mercy and peace. The scene of the feast in the 
house of Simon is for ever being repeated, like all else in the 
Gospel history. The Pharisee, defiant even in good intentions, 
has not changed ; he is always with us, unable to understand 
the God who pardons, and the repentant soul which expiates 
and adores. But by the side of these obstinate ones, hard of 
heart and stubborn of spirit, we can see and admire the souls 
that love and faith have saved. The tears of the Magdalene 
flow on unceasingly ; the perfumes are ever poured upon the 
Son of Man ; he is adored from century to century, and ceases 
not to speak to men the encouraging and consoling words: 
Many sins are forgiven to them who have loved much. Your 
faith hath saved you; ye who weep, ye who believe, ye who 
love, go in peace. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

The days which followed the arrival from Nain, and the 
striking conversion of Mary Magdalene, were spent in preach¬ 
ing the Gospel to the people. 

The activity of Jesus as a preacher was untiring. He went, 
says the Evangelist , 1 from city to city, from village to village, 
everywhere preaching and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. 
He travelled with the Twelve, without rest or respite. Jesus 
possessed nothing, neither treasures, nor lands, nor houses; 
absorbed in his divine work, he took thought neither of food 
nor raiment. But the Father provided him' with all things; 
he it was who called to the honour of serving him certain 
women , 2 whose perfect devotion to him was transfigured by 
faith, and increased a hundredfold by love. Many of them 
had been healed by Jesus of their infirmities ; and gratitude, a 
sentiment so natural to woman, made them his faithful 
servants. At their head, after the mother of Jesus, was Mary 
Magdalene, the penitent. Joanna, whose husband, Chuza, 
was the steward of the tetrarch Herod, as well as a certain 
Susanna, of whom nothing is known but the name, are also 
mentioned among them. These watched with tender solici¬ 
tude over the Master and his disciples ; they were the provi¬ 
dence of the little community ; rich and generous, they placed 

1 Luke viii. I. 

2 Luke viii. 2, 3. 


362 


JESUS CHRIST. 


their goods at his service; defraying the expenses of the 
journeys, preparing the food, and selecting the dwellings 
whose hospitality Jesus and his followers were to receive. 

Capernaum, and the lake on whose borders it stands, 
continued to be the centre of his journeyings. Thence he 
departed and thither he returned, bringing back with him, 
from the different countries into which he travelled, a nume¬ 
rous and enthusiastic following. As the scene of his dis¬ 
courses to the multitude, Jesus chose the high and solitary 
mountain, the clear and tranquil lake. The Gospel of the 
Kingdom was proclaimed from the summits of the hills, and 
from a fisherman’s boat. The walls of a synagogue were too 
narrow for the grandest teaching to which the world has 
ever listened ; it had need of the open air, the solitudes with 
their echoes, the sea with its murmuring waves. 

When he departed from Nain, Jesus returned to Caper¬ 
naum ; according to his custom, he retired to the sea-shore, 
and the people soon gathered around him. Then he entered 
the ship, which his disciples always kept in readiness for him, 
and while the multitude remained on the shore he began to 
teach them . 1 

“ Behold,” he said to them, “ a sower went forth to sow; 
and whilst he sowed some fell by the wayside, and the birds 
of the air came and ate them up. 

“ And other some fell upon stony ground, where they had 
not much earth; and they sprung up immediately, because 
they had no deepness of earth; and when the sun was up 
they were scorched ; and because they had no root, they 
withered away. 

“ And others fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung 
up, and choked them : 


Matt. xiii. 1-25 ; Mark iv. 1-20 ; Luke viii. 4-15. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 363 

“And others fell upon good ground, and they brought 
forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some 
thirtyfold” 

Then he warned his hearers not to take his words in their 
literal meaning, but to endeavour to comprehend the lesson 
hidden in them, saying, “ He that hath ears to hear, let him 
hear.” 

Jesus respected the guiding power of conscience; he did 
not seek to subdue it by force, he called to it gently. It is 
the part of conscience, helped by the grace of God, to respond; 
to open itself to the light; to pledge its good will by a first 
effort. This exercise of faith is for man the beginning of 
salvation ; by it he merits the justice of God. The disciples, 
eager as they were to understand, did not always succeed in 
grasping the meaning of the Master’s teachings; and while 
the multitude withdrew without seeking the light, they went 
in secret to question the Lord. 

“Ye do not comprehend this parable,” Jesus said to them, 
gently reproaching them with their lack of understanding; “if 
ye understand not this, which is so plain, how shall ye under¬ 
stand the others ? ” 

Jesus does not say that he is the sower, but he leaves it to 
be understood. No other metaphor could express his office 
so exactly, and with so profound a significance. He alone 
possesses the seeds of eternal life, and he holds them in his 
hand. The greatest among men sow only for death: Jesus 
sows for eternity. Nothing is more living than the seed ; it is 
the centre and the source of life. The word of God, in the 
soul, is the beginning of its spiritual life. Just as the seed is 
at once matter and force, the word is a sensible sign, an incar¬ 
nation of the Spirit of God. 

“The seed fallen by the wayside,” said Jesus, “which the 
birds carried away, are they who hear the word with a dry 
and shallow heart; the wicked one cometh and catcheth it 
30 


364 


JESUS CHRIST. 


away. And he who received the seed upon stony ground, is 
he that heareth the word, and immediately receiveth it with 
joy: yet hath he not root in himself, but is only for a time: 
and when there arise tribulation and persecution because of 
the word, he is presently offended” 

The root of the soul is God ; the profundity of the soul 
comes from him ; its life flows from his Spirit. The soul 
which seeketh not God has no depth. What is sown in it “ is 
scorched by the first rays of the sun, by the fire of tribu¬ 
lation. And the seed sown among thorns are those whom 
the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the 
lusts after other things have mastered, choking the word and 
making it fruitless. And these are they who are sown upon 
the good ground, who hear the word, and receive it and guard 
it in a pure and upright heart and practise it patiently.” 

Virtue is the fruit of doctrine ; in some it produces thirty, 
in some sixty, in some an hundredfold. 

Nothing is more hidden, more mysterious, than the seed ; 
nothing humbler or more secret than the divine word. The 
one is revealed by its fruit, the other is glorified by virtue. 
The soul is enlightened by the works of the Spirit: love, 
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, longsuffering, mild¬ 
ness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. 

In relation to the virtues of his disciples, Jesus said to 
them, “You shall be the light of God. Is a candle brought 
to be put under a bushel, or under a bed ? and not to be set 
on a candlestick ? ” 

The Father brings all things to perfection and to the 
light. 

“ For there is nothing hid which shall not be made mani¬ 
fest, neither was it made secret but that it may come abroad.” 

This universal law has found its fullest application in Jesus 
and his work. The Spirit concealed in him, the truth hidden 
under his parables, the Kingdom of God so humble and so 
little known of the world, confined at first to the souls of a 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 365 

few despised men, have filled the earth with their splendour, 
their power, their virtue. 

This indestructible vitality of the Kingdom is represented 
by Jesus in another parable : 

“ So is the kingdom of God,” he says, “ as if a man should 
cast seed into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and 
day, and the seed should spring and grow up he knoweth 
not how. For the earth of itself bringeth forth fruit; first 
the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn in the 
ear .” 1 

The virtue of God acts mysteriously in the soul of every 
creature, bestowing upon it growth and strength ; and it is not 
in the power of man to hinder that which God sows and 
nourishes. 

The sowing of the seed was a favourite metaphor with 
Jesus; it recalled to him his work. Nothing had ever a 
humbler origin ; nothing has risen to so great a height. 

“ Again, to what shall we compare the Kingdom? To a 
grain of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds; 
but when it is grown, it is greater than any herbs and 
becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge 
in the branches thereof.” 2 

This is indeed the fitting symbol of the Church of Christ, 
this grain of mustard seed become the giant tree, whose 
branches cover the earth and tower over all things. The 
greatest geniuses, those eagles upborne on soaring pinion, 
fatigued with their flight, and weary of their wisdom, have 
come, century after century, to repose in the shadow of the 
doctrine of Jesus, which alone satisfies, comforts, and enlight¬ 
ens. That which Jesus saw and prophesied, his first disciples 
could only believe and hope for; but we of a later age, more 
fortunate, behold it. The work of Jesus is the prolongation 


1 Mark iv. 26-29. 

2 Matt. xiii. 31-32 ; Mark iv. 30-32. 


JESUS CHRIST. 


366 

of his personality; time separates us from the one, but gives 
us possession of the other. 

He expressed the same thought under another image, 
comparing the “Kingdom of heaven to leaven, which a woman 
took, and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was 
leavened .” 1 

The true leaven is the Spirit of God; the woman is the 
Church ; and the meal, the people. Insipid in itself, mankind 
takes its savour from contact with the Spirit, which gradually 
penetrates and transforms it. 

The Kingdom of God in this world has not yet attained its 
full perfection. Good and evil dispute with each other the 
possession of the earth, and side by side with the great sower, 
who sows the good seed, the enemy sows the tares, and the 
two grains grow together in the same field. 

“The Kingdom of heaven,” he said, “is likened unto a man 
that sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept his 
enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 

“ And when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth 
fruit, there appeared also the tares. Then the servants of the 
master of the house came and said unto him, Master, didst thou 
not sow good seed in thy field ? From whence then hath it 
tares? And he said to them, An enemy hath done this. 
And the servants said to him, Wilt thou then that we go and 
gather them up? But he said, No ; lest while you gather up 
the tares ye root up the wheat also; let both grow until 
the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will say to the 
reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles 
to bum them ; but gather the wheat into my barn.” 

The disciples had not understood the hidden meaning of 
the tares sown in the field. The Master explained it to them 
when they were alone : 

“ He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man ; 


1 Matt. xiii. 33. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OE GOD. 367 

“ And the field is the world. 

“And the good seed are the children of the Kingdom. 
But the tares are the children of the wicked one. 

“ And the enemy that sowed them is the devil. But the 
harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the 
angels. 

“ Even as tares therefore are gathered up and burnt with 
fire, so shall it be at the end of the world. The Son of man 
shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his 
kingdom all things that offend, and them that work iniquity: 
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

“ Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in the King¬ 
dom of their Father.” 

Each of these sentences of Jesus is grand, sublime in 
its simplicity; they embrace all things, and describe in vivid 
outlines his great work, from its origin to its eternal consum¬ 
mation. The strife between good and evil is willed of God : 
the servants of the Master should accept it with resignation. 
Anger, so natural to man, impels the well-disposed to root up 
the tares. Jesus teaches us to tolerate evil, lest, in tearing 
it up with violence, we should destroy the good also; he 
should imitate the Heavenly Father in his infinite patience. 

The hour will come when the wheat and the tares shall 
be separated by the power of God ; an hour at once terrible 
and comforting, terrible to the wicked, comforting to the 
children of the Kingdom. 

Jesus, looking to the consummation of his work, saw from 
afar his own glory, the glory of his disciples, and the terrible 
condemnation by his Father of those who should turn away 
from him. He would frequently pourtray to the multitude 
such visions, brilliant or gloomy, of the world to come; they 
are wholesome, for they fill the mind with terror and hope: 
terror, which is the curb that restrains man from evil; hope, 
which is the spur that urges him towards God. 


3^8 


JESUS CHRIST. 


It was this idea which inspired him with the parable of 
the net : 1 

“ The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea, 
gathering together of all kinds of fish, which, when it was filled, 
they drew out, and, sitting by the shore, they chose out the 
good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth. So shall it be 
at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth, and shall 
separate the wicked from among the just; and shall cast 
them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth.” 

It would be difficult to overestimate the zeal of Jesus in 
enlightening the Galilaean people, and teaching them his 
•doctrines. His discourse abounds in vivid images. 

“Would you know what the kingdom of heaven is like?” 
he said to them. “ A treasure hidden in a field, which when 
a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and 
selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field . 2 

“ Again, the kingdom of heaven,” he said, “ is like unto a 
merchant seeking goodly pearls : who, when he had found one 
pearl of great price, went his way and sold all that he had, 
and bought it.” 3 

And man must indeed give up all things if he would 
possess God. Only at the price of all he has can he purchase 
the pearl and the field and the treasure which is there con¬ 
cealed. The timid and the selfish draw back, unwilling to 
impoverish themselves to obtain the riches of the Kingdom ; 
one will not give up his pleasures, and he loses the joys of 
God; another holds to his narrow science, and cannot enter 
into eternal truth; another cherishes worldly ambition, and 
rejects the grandeur of the life eternal reserved for the 
children of God. 

1 Matt. xiii. 47*50. 

3 Matt. xiii. 44. 

3 Matt. xiii. 45-46. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 369 

The whole teaching of Jesus, with its essential traits, is 
contained in his parables. 

The divine function and the dignity of the Master, his 
life of suffering and his final triumph, the inward character and 
universality of his work, with its humble beginnings, its unobtru¬ 
sive energy, with its incessant struggles and their immense 
results, the duties and the qualifications of him who would enter 
into them, the hostility of the world, the part played by Satan, 
the sower of the tares ; the part played by the angels, those 
invisible harvesters; the providence of the Father, who 
watches over the great drama and prepares its result; all 
this is indicated in them. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is the central idea of all the 
teachings of Jesus, the idea which always moved the masses 
most powerfully. The multitude were far from grasping the 
profound significance of his parables; they perceived only 
the outer shell, as it were, the exterior signs, and all that could 
flatter their prejudices or appeal to their interests. The 
miracles especially dazzled them; but the doctrines them¬ 
selves did not enlighten them. The multitude have something 
of the child in them ; they are more impressed by power than 
by wisdom, and even when they admire the teaching of Jesus, 
the Scriptures lay stress upon this, it is his power which 
astonishes and subjugates them. 

“ Behold,” they said, “ he teaches them as one having 
authority, not as the Scribes and Pharisees .” 1 

Yet Jesus undertook the difficult task of preaching the 
Gospel to them, and opening their conscience to the truth. 

No popular orator can ever be compared to him, even in 
point of eloquence. He stands at the head of that select and 
saintly few who have received from God the power to move 
the people without appealing to their earthly passions. He 
never made use of the slightest sophism, he never deviated in 


1 Matt. vii. 29; Mark i. 22; Luke iv. 32. 


370 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the slightest from the truth: he could show consideration, 
without flattering them, for the weaknesses of those who 
heard him; he always suited his discourse to his hearers, 
employing one form of speech with his apostles in the famili¬ 
arity of private intercourse, another with the Pharisees 
and the learned, and yet another when he addressed the 
multitude. 

To his disciples he opens his heart, whence flow truths, 
eloquent and tender; addressing the learned, he appeals to 
the Scriptures, he confounds them by the irresistible logic of 
his arguments, and rebukes their hypocrisy by his crushing 
anathemas ; to the people he expounds his doctrine veiled in 
parables. 

This figurative style was much affected by Jewish rhetoric. 
The distinguished rabbis were renowned for their parables and 
their maxims. Every people has its literary genius; the 
Hindoos have their tales and fantastic stories ; the Greeks and 
the Romans their dialogues and their fables; the Jews their 
parables and their proverbs. 

In adopting this mode of popular teaching, Jesus has 
imparted to it a simplicity, a truth, a sobriety, a charm 
never known before. The greater number of his parables 
remain engraven on the memory ; they realize abstract beauty. 
All mankind know and admire them ; the child spells them out 
and the man meditates upon them, the ignorant understand 
them, and thinkers find in them a source of boundless illu¬ 
mination. 

The very essence of the parable is that it facilitates the 
comprehension of invisible and immaterial things, difficult to 
express or hard to understand, by comparing them with 
sensible and material objects, easily perceived. It is based 
on symbolism, harmony, the universal hierarchy. 

All created beings resemble one another to some extent, 
and are bound together in a relationship, an affinity, more or 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 371 

less close. The entire universe bears the stamp and the image 
of God, the source of all things ; just as, within the universe, 
the least things bear the stamp and image of the greatest. 
The body is made in the image of the soul, instinct gives a 
presage of liberty. Material nature is the symbol of the 
spiritual world: the sky is symbolic of the glory of God; 
space of his immensity; the wind is his Spirit, light his 
beauty ; and time, ever-changing, changeless eternity. 

The more comprehensive the mind, and the better able to 
embrace the entirety of things, so much the more clearly it 
perceives unity in apparent diversity, and so much the more 
it excels in comparison. 

Human nature, that unites in its complexity all the 
elements, all the kingdoms, and all the worlds, is especially 
endowed with the faculty of perceiving analogies and resem¬ 
blances. God sees all things in the unity of his Word, which 
has produced all things; the immaterial mind contemplates 
all things in ideas, which are simple and precious in proportion 
as it is itself elevated; the man of feeling and imagination 
comprehends the divine, the spiritual, the invisible, only 
through the symbol of material reality; he divines God by 
the creation in which God is reflected, spirits by his own soul, 
and his soul by the matter which it animates and on which it 
stamps its image. 

Considered thus, the art of the parable is no longer a 
Jewish specialty, it is the setting to work of human intelligence 
and its normal course of action. 

The broadest field opened to allegory is offered by the 
relation between God and the creation, between the soul and 
God. Certain peoples, as the Hindoos and the Greeks, are in 
this respect behind the Semites and the Jews, because the 
former, confounding by their pantheism the creation with 
God, have lost sight of their just relations, while the latter, in 
maintaining a strict distinction between them, have kept 


372 


JESUS CHRIST. 


intact the exhaustless treasure of their analogies. While the 
poetry of the former has degenerated into monstrous and 
absurd legends, that of the latter has preserved the healthy 
and vigorous energy of truth. They did not give the world the 
attributes of God: they comprehended the littleness of the 
great universe; they discerned, in its nothingness, the un¬ 
fathomable grandeurs of the infinite. 

In adopting the form of the parable, Jesus penetrated the 
very law of human intelligence, the law which best responds 
to the nature of the Master, as well as to that of the disciples. 
But these laws being immutable, they communicate their 
immutability to the forms which they consecrate. 

Hence, among other causes, the eternal youth of the 
parables of the Gospels. 

The parable, considered in itself, is perfect in proportion as 
it is correct and profound. Correctness depends upon the 
symbol chosen, profundity upon the truth concealed under the 
symbol. The more close the resemblance between the symbol 
and the truth symbolized, the more exact the parable. The 
profounder the truth symbolized, the sublimer the parable. 
Jesus, in his discourse to the people, has disdained vain poetry, 
and the search after striking images ; he adhered to simplicity 
and unity of treatment, choosing the most familiar objects as 
symbols of the truth. The sublimity of the doctrine thus contrasts 
with the humility of the symbol. There is no pomp, no false 
splendour; all is simplicity. This is the only vesture in which 
he has chosen to clothe the holy nudity of the Spirit. He does 
not desire to fix the attention by the external form, the symbol: 
he puts aside all that could charm or distract. Men of the 
greatest intellect often conceal the truth, and sometimes dis¬ 
figure it, by overloading it with borrowed ornament. Jesus 
reveals it while he seems to hide it; for the veil in which he 
wraps it, allows the outlines of its form to appear in all their 
purity. Thus, while the deathless words of the man of genius 
often please only our aesthetic sense, the chosen simplicity of 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 373 

Jesus repels the profane and engenders, in upright hearts 
knowledge and virtue. 

One of the greatest gifts of the orator, especially of the 
popular orator, is tact, without which all his power, and all 
his vehemence of action, remain fruitless. It is not enough to 
interpret truth to a people, it is necessary to adapt it to the 
consciousness of that people. An excess of light dazzles ; he 
who does not know how to temper the light blinds instead of 
enlightening. The tact of eloquence is inspired by the love of 
truth and by the love of mankind. He who loves truth more 
than he loves himself, seeks to make it triumph, and does not 
expose it by revealing it indiscreetly, to indifference or con¬ 
tempt ; and he who loves men divines their weaknesses, and 
makes allowance for them, communicating to them only so 
much as they can understand. 

The method observed by Jesus in teaching the people 
shows his exquisite prudence. He who came into this world 
to bear witness to the Truth, loved it even unto death. His 
every word breathes discretion and moderation. He never 
threw pearls before swine, nor gave that which is holy unto the 
dogs. His love for his people, for his country, for the race that 
he desired to redeem, shines on every page of his life. He 
knew their weakness, their prejudices, their ignorance, their 
hardness, their incapacity; and he had compassion for them. 
He was patient, for he knew that his Gospel and his doctrine, 
destined to enlighten coming ages, would require ages to 
penetrate the minds of men and regenerate the world. 

But however great may be the weakness of mankind, 
however sublime may be the truth, there yet exist between 
them indestructible affinities. They attract each other ; and 
if man be unable to raise himself to the truth, the truth will 
come down to man. As God was incarnate in the Man 
Jesus, so eternal Truth became incarnate in the parables that 
proceeded from his mouth. But in the same way that God 


374 


JESUS CHRIST. 


incarnate is the better loved and comprehended, so likewise 
divine Truth is sweeter and more comprehensible in the 
parables. Even the ignorant can understand them, and Jesus 
has found the secret, by their means, of teaching the mysteries 
of God to the lowest of the children of men. 

This art of tempering the brightness of the True is one of 
the rules of divine government. God did not wish to crush 
man with overwhelming evidence; he lets his rays fall with a 
mild lustre, in order to inspire faith, while respecting the 
freedom of the will. Christ, his great work, is instinct with 
this mysterious character; the Spirit with which he is filled 
shrouds itself under the veil of humanity. 

The disciples wondered at the mystery in which the Master, 
in addressing the multitude, always enveloped his teaching. 
The cause of this disguise they did not perceive. It is seldom 
that the wisdom of God does not shock the reason of the man 
who dares to judge it by his own light. 

“ Why speakest thou unto them in parables,” they said to 
Jesus when they were alone, “while to us thou speakest with¬ 
out images ? ” 1 

It may be that this question was inspired by zeal. The 
disciples must have desired the glory of the Lord, and in their 
impatience they may have wished to behold him dazzle and 
enthral the multitude by the splendour of his teaching. 

Jesus answered them: “To you who believe, to you who 
love me, it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom oi 
heaven ; to them who will not believe, to them who are with¬ 
out, it is not given.” Their attention is attracted by the symbol, 
“ therefore speak I to them in parables.” To believe is the 
beginning of wisdom; to doubt is the cause of spiritual 
darkness. 

“ To him that hath,” this beginning of wisdom, “ shall be 


1 Matthew xiii. 10-17. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 375 

given in full measure; and from him that hath not shall be 
taken away even that which he seemeth to have.” 

Faith attracts the gifts of God, but unbelief dries up the 
source from which they spring. Once abandoned to himself, 
once deprived of the divine strength by which our life is mul¬ 
tiplied an hundredfold, our virtues fructify, our whole nature 
is ennobled, man plunges little by little into error, which is 
the death of reason, and into vice, which is the death of the 
soul; the mind is darkened, the heart is oppressed, the will 
is weakened, the conscience is rendered stubborn. 

“Therefore it is,” adds Jesus, “that I speak in figures, so 
that those who are unworthy, seeing shall perceive not, and 
hearing shall hear and understand not. I fulfil thus the word 
of Isaiah, prophesying to this people, You shall hear with your 
ears, and shall not understand ; and seeing, you shall see and 
shall not perceive. For the heart of this people is grown gross, 
and their ears have grown dull of hearing; and their eyes 
they have closed, lest at any time they see with their eyes, 
and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and 
should be converted, and I should heal them .” 1 

This is an appalling sentence. 

It is no longer the vengeance of God; it is his love that 
this people fear; they fear to see, fear to hear, fear to under¬ 
stand, fear to be converted, fear to be healed by God; there¬ 
fore it is that they shut their eyes and turn away from him. 

Evil must be attended by its fatal consequences. When 
man in his obstinacy has reached a certain point of degra¬ 
dation, he seems no longer worthy of conversion: God, his 
mercy exhausted, leaves him to himself, and the most terrible 
punishment of the sinner who has so long provoked him is 
the hardening of the heart against the last appeals which 
save those predestined to salvation. 

But even the hardened and the stiff-necked are sometimes 
overcome by goodness. Even such as have crucified Christ or 


1 Isaiah vi. 9-10. 


37$ 


JESUS CHRIST. 


massacred his disciples, can fall vanquished at their feet, and 
be regenerate by the merits of their blood, for the love of God 
is a fire which renders the soul malleable, though it were as 
hard as granite. However heavy the hand of divine justice 
may press upon the human race, the last word of the divine 
government is not justice, but mercy. 

It was in this spirit that Jesus added : 

“ But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your 
ears, because they hear. 

“ For verily I say unto you, Many prophets and just men 
have desired to see the things that you see and have not seen 
them, and to hear the things that you hear and have not heard 
them.” 

Incomprehensible in the mouth of man, these words are 
natural from the lips of Jesus ; they express the consciousness 
which he had of his divinity; those who see him are blessed ; 
those who hear him are enlightened. 

We can imagine how close must have been the intimacy 
among the Twelve, gathered around the Master in the upper 
room, when at night, the multitude having dispersed, Jesus, 
resting from his labours, opened to them treasures of wisdom 
and holiness of which the world knew not. 

In the confidence of this peaceful hour he opened to them 
his heart. No profane or indifferent intruder, no stranger was 
a restraint upon their intercourse. The disciples could ask all 
things, and Jesus could tell them all things ; he allowed those 
simple and unsophisticated souls to see into his heart, and, as 
one of the Evangelists says, he explained to them every¬ 
thing ; his condescension was, like his tenderness, boundless; 
it had the patience of a father. 

When he had spoken he would ask his disciples: “ Have 
ye understood all these things ? ” and they, entranced, would 
answer: “Yea, Lord .” 1 

1 Matt. xiii. 51-52. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 377 

One day, speaking of their calling him Master, he said to 
them : 

“ The true Scribe who has a knowledge of the Kingdom 
of heaven is like the master of a house who bringeth forth out 
of his treasure new things and old.” 

He understands the wants of his children and supplies 
them. Human knowledge is poor and weak, at times harsh; 
it has the key neither to our past nor our future. To the 
mind hungering after eternal truth it has no nourishment to 
offer; and if for a moment it can distract a suffering heart, 
it has never consoled one. It is absorbed in the study of 
the phenomena which mark the changing face of this world; 
and though it may attain to a perception of a first cause, it 
can never elevate to it our restless and unquiet nature. 

He who has been initiated into the knowledge of God 
learns from it the law, and the aim and the end of all 
things; he views all things in relation to the eternal; he 
knows that God is preparing his Kingdom among men, and 
that since the days of the first human pair, through all time 
and space, in the midst of all the turmoils of families, peoples, 
civilizations, races, in the sanguinary chaos of interests, 
passions, doctrines, religions, the living and loving Spirit 
accomplishes and continues its work of salvation, of truth 
and of goodness, of justice and of mercy, of love and of peace ; 
he knows that this Spirit has had its full and complete mani¬ 
festation in Jesus, and that Jesus, the hope of the past, the 
sign that everywhere is spoken against in the present, is the 
reserve force of the future, the completion of the work of 
God. 

Christ is the divine treasure on which mankind may draw 
without ceasing ; like all things which are eternal, he is at once 
old and new; he responds to all that has been, all that is, all 
that will be: he possesses the key to the past, to the present, 
and to the future. Ask of him truth, and he will teach it; 
vital strength, and he will communicate it; consolation and 


37 * 


JESUS CHRIST. 


he will pour it upon you abundantly; hope, and he will make 
it dawn before you ; bliss, and a very outcast though you be, 
he will give you a foretaste of its ineffable sweetness. 

Man has no longer the right to complain ; his destiny is a 
noble one. What matter his miseries and his wants! it is 
sweet to feel their stimulus, for there is one to relieve and 
supply them. What he sought with most ardour and most 
anguish, what was for ever escaping him ; life and happiness, 
life which fears no death, true happiness, which trial does but 
augment; these priceless benefits are henceforth within his 
reach; it depends only upon himself to ask them from Jesus, 
to live and be happy. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE SUPREME INSULT OF THE PHARISEES. 

PUBLIC preaching by the lake marked the culminating point 
of the apostolic work in Galilee. 

In a few weeks the whole mass of the country was 
stirred ; nothing could neutralise the divine influence of the 
new Prophet. The crowd, in spite of its prejudices, could no 
longer resist, when brought face to face with the power of his 
word, the number and splendour of his cures and miracles. 
Convinced by what it saw, it proclaimed in Jesus the Son of 
David, greeting him by the title of the expected Messiah. 
From all parts, those who sought the Prophet, flocked to 
Capernaum, which became illustrious among the little towns 
of Zebulun and Naphtali. 

But in proportion as the movement spread among the 
people, all the evil passions which are stirred up at the coming 
of a man of God, spite, jealousy, uneasiness, offence, threats, 
insult, and hatred, gathered strength among the chiefs, the 
elders, the scribes and the Pharisees. Jerusalem, which re¬ 
mained the centre of the opposition, never lost sight of the 
movement nor of him who caused it. Emissaries were sent 
by the Sanhedrin with the command to keep watch over Jesus 
and to undeceive the crowd. 

But a popular movement cannot be stopped by a few 
doctors; even force does not always succeed. Those who 
possess power and employ it in the service of a worn- 
out tradition, never rightly estimate either the forces which 
3i 


JESUS CHRIST. 


380 • 

they are fighting against or those which they employ, and 
their illusions are the cause of their fall. 

It seems that it was the standing order to speak slightingly 
of Jesus, and to compromise him in public opinion. Calumny 
is the favourite weapon of hatred; it delights to insult while 
waiting to destroy. 

The Pharisees of Galilee, like those of Jerusalem, could 
not dispute the extraordinary power of the word of Jesus, nor 
cast doubt upon the prodigious miracles, the fame of which 
resounded on all sides: the healing of those who were sick, 
the raising from the dead, and the casting out of devils. They 
did not even dream of doing so. If they had been sincere 
they would have followed the example of the people and 
added their acclamations to theirs ; but to acknowledge Jesus 
was to condemn themselves; to hail in him the messenger 
of God was to abdicate. 

No religious power has ever given an example of generous, 
spontaneous renunciation. It has always been necessary that 
God should let loose upon it the torrent of events which shall 
carry it away. 

It was then that the Pharisees hurled against Jesus, in the 
crowd, the most cruel insult and the most odious blasphemy . 1 

“ It is not God that is in him,” said they, “ it is the devil. 
The spirit of evil directs him, and in the name of Beelzebub 
he casts out devils.” 

They had already called him a friend of publicans and 
sinners, a man who rejected their observances, a lover of wine 
and of good living, a Sabbath-breaker, a blasphemer, and one 
who despised the ancient teachers; now they say he is a 
magician, one possessed of a devil. Jesus remained calm, he 
asserted the truth in all its intensity; but he replied to the 
insult with terrible severity. A more inexorable word never 
fell from his lips, to repulse outrage and to denounce hypocrisy. 


Matt. xii. 24-45 ; Mark iii. 22-30. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 381 


“ And he called them to him, and said unto them in para¬ 
bles : How can Satan cast out Satan ? And if a kingdom be 
divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand . 1 2 And every 
city or house divided against itself shall not stand . 3 And if 
Satan rise up against himself and be divided, he cannot stand, 
but hath an end . 8 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by 
whom do your children cast them out ? Therefore they shall 
be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, 
then the kingdom of God is come unto you. Or else how can 
one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, 
except he first bind the strong man ? and then he will spoil his 
house. 

“ He that is not with me is against me ; and he that gather- 
eth not with me scattereth abroad . 4 * 

“And if I act by the Spirit of God,” he seemed to say, “ he 
who is not with me is against the Spirit of God ; and he who 
does not gather in this Spirit can only scatter abroad. The 
Spirit is the bond of all things.” Then, raising his voice, he 
added these terrible words : “ Verily I say unto you, All sins 
shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies where¬ 
with soever they shall blaspheme : but he that shall blaspheme 
against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger 
of eternal damnation .” 6 


There are irremissible faults, “an everlasting sin.”® Blas¬ 
phemous insults and calumnies against the Son of Man, such 

1 St. Mark iii, 23, 24. 

2 St. Matth. xii, 25. 

3 St. Mark iii, 26. 

4 St. Matth. xii, 27-30. 

6 St. Mark iii, 28, 29. 

c St. Mark iii, 29 (Douay version). 


JESUS CHRIST. 


382 

as calling him a wine-bibber, an impious person, a Samaritan, 
are offences that may be forgiven ; but to attribute to the Evil 
One his Godlike works and miracles, and thereby to outrage 
the Holy Ghost working in Christ, this is blasphemy which may 
neither be excused nor forgiven. 

By the teaching of Jesus and by rigorous justice, sin is 
only remitted by God, by his Spirit of pity, love, and goodness. 
Every man who does not reject this Spirit, however weak, 
erring, and sinful he may be; every man who does not say of 
God “ He is evil,” and of the work of Jesus “ It is the work 
of evil, darkness, and oppression,” may yet be gathered into 
the fold and saved. But the man who, by an act of sacri¬ 
legious presumption, puts himself in opposition to the Spirit, 
who rejects it by blasphemy and obstinate hatred, that man 
wilfully closes for himself the only way by which pardon 
might reach him. He, as it were, hermetically seals his 
mind and forbids the approach of God, who is ever ready 
to pardon. The outraged Spirit withdraws, leaving the 
blasphemer to his “ eternal sin.” When death, which separates 
time from eternity, strikes him, there is no change, for death 
perpetuates both the good and the evil; to the one, as to the 
other, it sets the seal of eternity. 

Let the weak take comfort, and those who have wandered 
from the right path be filled with hope, for, even at the eleventh 
hour, they may receive mercy if they ask for it. But only the 
avenging justice of God awaits those who, far from invoking 
this mercy, outrage its very principle. It will lie heavy upon 
them ; and the infinite goodness which they have spurned will 
no longer be able to avert it, and with it eternal wrath and 
condemnation. 

Jesus reminds his insulters of the most simple laws of 
wisdom and reason, and penetrating, as usual, the very 
secrets of their hearts, he shows them why they trans- 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 383 

gress these laws, and declares openly the hidden source 
of their blasphemy. As “the tree is known by its fruit,” 
he cried, “ so is the heart of man revealed by his works. 
A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, nor a corrupt 
tree good fruit.” My works are good, they could not proceed 
from Beelzebub. The devil is evil, he could not bring forth 
good works. 

“ O generation of vipers, how can ye speak good things ? 99 
That which you see and hear does not move your stubborn 
hearts, and “ out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh.” But account must be given of every word spoken, 
even the idle words, at the day of judgment. “Your words 
will justify you or they will condemn you.” Some words are 
quite as criminal as deeds, for they give offence, they scandalise, 
they corrupt, and they kill; those of the Pharisees, to which 
Jesus refers here, are like the viper’s sting. There is no 
doubt that they influenced the crowd which heard them, and 
those to whom the enemies of Jesus reported them. Those 
who were indifferent or hostile to the general enthusiasm 
welcomed them, and it was among these that calumny made 
its way and did its fatal work. 

Some regarded the extreme earnestness of the Master as 
fanaticism, and his work as madness. The sublimity of his 
teaching was beyond them. His constant activity in preach¬ 
ing the word, the thronging of the crowd around him, the 
nights spent in prayer, the days in healing the sick, his house 
assailed so that he could with difficulty find time to take 
food ; in a word, his whole existence so instinct with the 
Spirit, and so far removed from commonplace conditions: 
all these things were little understood. 

He was blamed even by his own family, and some of his 
brethren boldly treated him as a madman, a demoniac, a 
fanatic . 1 


1 Matt. xii. 46-50; Mark iii. 31-35 ; Luke viii. 19-20. 


384 


JESUS CHRIST. 


They wished to draw him away from the crowd, and to 
take him with them far from the uproar, where, as they said 
he was beside himself. 

A short time after the violent scene, when Jesus treated 
the emissaries of the Sanhedrin with all the indignation of a 
man deeply wounded on those points which he held most 
sacred, the people pushed into the house which the emissaries 
had just left and sat round him. The earnest faith of 
these lowly men comforted him, after the blasphemy of the 
great and their arrogant science. It is to be remarked as a 
law in the life of Jesus, and one which has prevailed ever since, 
that every insult offered by those men who are led away by 
their reason and by hatred, calls forth in the people an 
increase of love and confidence. 

The joy of the Master was to see his Spirit shine forth. He 
felt it to the full when they came and said to him, “ Master, 
behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for 
thee.” 

We may feel sure, that the mother of Jesus was not one of 
those who judged him in their miserable wisdom; we must 
suppose that her solicitude for her son led her to him, to 
comfort him in the struggles of his apostolic work. Jesus 
replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” and, 
looking around on those which sat about him, he said, 

“ Behold my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall 
listen to the word of God and do his will, the same is my 
brother, and my sister, and my mother.” 

Ties of blood did not exist for the Son of Man : human 
relationship was immaterial. Just as the earthly family is 
constituted by the unity of the same blood running in 
our veins, so the heavenly family is constituted by the 
unity of the same Spirit pervading our souls. Jesus does 
not belong to the earth: born of the Spirit, and filled 
with it, he is the founder of the great family of the sons 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 385 

of God, and so, even if one should be of the same blood as he, 
one can only become his mother, his brother, or his sister, by 
participating in the fulness of his Spirit. All those who have 
been impelled by a higher inspiration, and those who, subju¬ 
gated by God’s call, have dedicated their whole life to his 
service, will understand without difficulty these words of 
Jesus. 

Every strong conviction ends by taking possession of us ; 
it overcomes and absorbs us, and tears us ruthlessly from 
everything else; it becomes our sole object, and outside it 
nothing seems to touch us; those who do not understand 
it are strangers to us ; those who attack it are our enemies ; 
those who love and serve it with us are our true, our only 
family. 

On the evening of one of the days when Jesus had 
taught the people in parables 1 on the shores of the lake, he 
said suddenly to his disciples, “Let us pass over unto the 
other side .” 2 

The events which were about to occur seemed arranged 
by Providence to confirm the faith of the disciples, by making 
the sovereign power of Jesus shine forth. The more he is 
attacked by men, the more does the Father exalt the glory 
of his Son and reassure those who share his destiny. 

The disciples obeyed ; they sent away the crowd of 
listeners who were sitting on the shore, set sail, and took 
Jesus even as he was in the ship. Other little ships were also 
with them. A great tempest arose, and the wind drove the 
waves into the ship, so that it began to fill. But he was in 
the hinder part of the ship asleep with his head upon a pillow. 
The disciples, terrified by the storm, awoke him: “ Master, 
save us ! we perish. 

“ Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith ?” said Jesus to 
them. 

1 Mark iv. 35. 

2 Mark iv. 35, etc.; Matt. viii. 18-27 ; Luke viii. 22-25. 


386 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Then he arose, and as if nature were animated by some 
mysterious spirit, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: 
“ Peace, be still.” 

At his word the wind and the waves were stilled, and 
there was a great calm. 

“ How is it that ye have no faith?” said Jesus to his 
disciples. They were seized with fear; and, looking at one 
another, they said with wonder mixed with terror: “ What 
manner of man is this ? He commands the wind and the 
sea, and they obey him.” 

Jesus, in this miraculous act, reveals by his power his 
divine nature. His word has sovereign might and authority ; 
it derives nothing from others, and brings about all that it 
commands. Nature, even in its most tumultuous phases, 
obeys him like a docile and intelligent servant. He com¬ 
manded the wind to be silent, and it was silent ; the raging 
waves to cease from troubling, and they were still. A man 
gifted with such power is no longer a man, he has the strength 
of God. Those who shrink from this conclusion deny the 
fact; but the denial is confronted with the unimpeachable 
testimony of the sacred writings. The divine personality of 
him whose life we are following, has nothing of our littleness 
of nature; whether he commands the sea, or whether he 
teaches the Beatitudes, he has always a divine grandeur, for 
he manifests always the power or the wisdom of God. 

Such acts, we can readily understand, exerted a great 
influence on his disciples. Their faith took root, the idea 
which they had formed of their Master was gradually exalted, 
and with their faith they felt their admiration and their 
devotion grow. Nothing less would have sufficed to detach 
their hearts from the adverse influences which surrounded 
them. Miracles were a part of the education of the first 
faithful followers of Jesus, they are one of the forces which 
explain their rapid conversion ; they impress themselves on 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 387 

the mind, and form an essential feature of the Gospel 
narrative. 

The ship, with Jesus and his disciples on board, assailed 
by wind and waves, Jesus asleep in the hinder part of the 
vessel, the terrified disciples crying to their Master, “ Save us, 
we perish ! ” he, always calm, in the midst of the tempest, 
reproaching them for their fear, as if one could ever fear so 
near to him ; his word more powerful even than the raging 
storm and sea, commanding the wind to be silent and the 
waves to be calm ; the sudden, complete, absolute tranquillity 
which followed ; and the admiration mixed with fear, 
prompting the cry of faith in him who is stronger than 
nature : this whole incident, with its vivid details, has become 
a popular symbol of the work of Jesus. The Church is 
Peter’s ship, which bears Christ and his disciples. It will 
go, on the evening of the last day, to the eternal shore, cross¬ 
ing this world where the tempest rages. Jesus, unseen, seems 
to be asleep, prayer awakes and arouses him; he shows 
himself and grieves that we should have been afraid; his 
presence is the pledge of our peace. He can command 
events as well as the tempest and the waves, he can control 
them whenever he will with an all-powerful word. From the 
sea which he calms there rises a cry of adoration, and by it 
we may track the course of the ship through the silence of 
the world. 

Jesus has the strength of God; he is the master of human 
passions and of their angry waves, which have no power to 
sink the Church of God. 

The ship, after the tempest, reached without further 
difficulty the eastern shore where Jesus wished to disembark . 1 
He landed in the country of the Gerasenes, a little beyond 


* Matt. viii. 28, etc.; Mark v. 1-10 ; Luke viii. 26, etc. 


388 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the ancient Gerasa . 1 This small town, situated at one end of 
the Wady Es-Semak, was part of Decapolis. The mountains 
of the valley extend on the right and on the left, and rise 
precipitously above the lake to the height of the plateaux of 
Gaulonitis. They are pierced with caves which are used as 
tombs. The ruins of Gerasa remain under the name of 
Kersa. The old basalt walls of the tumbled-down houses, 
levelled to the ground, are still to be distinguished. 

The ruins of a castle, which guarded the road to the shore 
of the lake, in front of Kersa, form a little hill which is covered 
by the bushy branches of a sturdy terebinth. Bedouins en¬ 
camp around, their black tents spread in the midst of the 
green grass ; their flocks wander about the valley and on the 
hillsides. 

At the very moment when Jesus went ashore, immediately 
there came to him, out of the tombs which cover the hills, a 
man of terrible aspect . 2 He lived among the tombs ; no man 
could bind him, not even with chains; he was the terror of the 
whole country. Though often bound with chains, and his feet 
in irons, he had always plucked asunder the chains and 
broken the irons in pieces, and without resting, he wandered 
day and night on the lonely mountains and in the tombs, 
crying, tearing his garments, and cutting himself with stones. 

This violent madness was aggravated by demoniac posses¬ 
sion. The whole story is otherwise inexplicable. Seeing Jesus 
coming from afar, he ran to him, fell down before him, and 
crying with a loud voice, he said, “ What have I to do with 
thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God ? I adjure thee 
by God that thou torment me not.” It was not the madman 
who spoke, it was the evil spirit with which he was possessed 
revealing itself. The attitude of the evil spirit towards 
Jesus is always the same ; a superior force seems to impel 
the evil spirit to him. It recognised the Son of God in this 

1 See Appendix L : Kersa and Gadara. 

2 See Appendix K : The Demoniac of Kersa . 
























ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE, AT ET TABIGHAH, THE SUPPOSED SITE OF BETHSAIDA. 
An oleander in* full bloom grows among the rocks, and storks are characteristically hovering over the lake. 













































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 389 

extraordinary man ; it felt itself already conquered and en¬ 
chained : it did not blaspheme, it asked for mercy. 

These words throw a little light upon the mystery of the 
lost spirits. Their satanic joy is in the evil which they can 
do. The nothingness of their nature from which they have 
expelled God is their torment. To escape from themselves 
to enslave man and to trouble the earth would be a solace 
and a diversion in the terrible void to which they are con¬ 
demned to be thrown back again upon themselves, upon that 
Ego which, without God, can only be dark, hideous, feeble, 
empty, this is what is meant by their imprisonment in the 
abyss. 

Jesus did not speak to this wretched man, he replied to 
the evil spirit. He wishes first to deliver the soul, and when 
the soul is freed he will save the body. 

“Unclean spirit,” said he to him, “come out of this man. 
What is thy name ? ” 

“ Legion,” said the spirit , 1 and renewing his entreaties he 
besought Jesus not to send him away out of the country. 

Jesus did not answer. 

Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd 
of swine feeding. “ Send us into the swine,” cried the spirits 
by the mouth of the demoniac, “that we may enter into 
them.” Jesus gave them leave. As he had, that same night, 
mastered the powers of nature, by calming the wind and the 
waves, he seemed in this exorcism to have more than ever the 
power to subdue spirits ; he spoke to them with a voice they 
could not resist, they went whithersoever he willed. 

At a sign from Jesus, the unclean spirits went out of the 
man and entered into the swine, and the herd of about two 
thousand ran violently down a steep place into the sea and 
were drowned. 

1 This name, which called to mind the conquest and the domination 
of the Jewish people by the Roman armies, expressed vigorously the 
tyranny exerted on man by the evil spirits, whose power over him cannot 
be measured. 


390 


JESUS CHRIST. 


It has been asked by what right Jesus inflicted this loss 
on the Gerasenes. Does not everything belong to God and 
to him who exercises his authority? The same hand which 
lets loose plagues and the powers of death upon the terri¬ 
fied earth, unchains also the evil spirits which ravage the 
human world. But in proving and in chastising us, it raises 
us, for with its power it makes us feel our own insignificance 
and the sovereignty of God. 

The animal world, with its varied forms, mysterious in 
their variety, is merely a vast hieroglyph, where the realities 
of the invisible world, of the soul and the spirit, may 
be deciphered. There are striking affinities between the 
forms and instincts of animals and the psychical charac¬ 
teristics of men. Many men, the cringing, the tortuous, the 
unclean, have among the fauna an exact prototype. The 
swine, invaded by devils, represent those evil and corrupt 
powers whose temptations during centuries have succeeded 
in transforming the human race into a herd of the sty of 
Epicurus. 

They that fed the swine fled, terrified, and told what 
they had seen in the city and in the country. At this news 
many ran to Jesus, and they saw the man who was possessed 
of the devil sitting at his feet, clothed and in his right 
mind 

The Gerasenes at this touching sight had only one feel¬ 
ing, that of fear; only one thought, the loss of their swine. 
Such coarse and selfish natures could not understand 
him who had just landed on their territory. We do not 
know whether they were Jews or Gentiles, for Decapolis 
had a very mixed population. They could find nothing 
to say to the mysterious guest who had healed the 
demoniac ; they were afraid of him. The man of God often 
disconcerts those whom he visits. They would rather not 
be disturbed in their earthly career, in the unreal calm of the 
reign of the passions. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 391 

Instead of offering hospitality to Jesus, they dismissed 
him, timidly praying him to depart from their coasts. Jesus, 
who had respect for all men, even in their blindness and 
misery, would never thrust himself upon anyone. He re¬ 
turned to the shore and departed. 

And when he was come into the ship, the man whom he 
had healed prayed him that he might follow him. He felt 
himself powerfully drawn to his deliverer; it seemed to him 
that his life should be dedicated to him: such inspiration is 
possible to gratitude. The Master did not accede to his 
wishes, but, touched by his faith, he made an apostle even 
of this man, who had been violently possessed of a devil. 

“ Go home,” said he, “ to thy friends and tell them how 
great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he hath 
had compassion on thee.” 

In Galilee, where Jesus was always so careful not to arouse 
^ popular excitement, he forbade those whom he healed to 
publish abroad their cure ; but in this country, where he was 
only making a short stay, and which he was about to leave so 
hastily, he wished that his name should remain after him, 
and that the outcasts of the Gerasenes should not be entire 
strangers to the work of deliverance which God was accom¬ 
plishing for his people . 1 All who have been saved by the 
mercy of God hear, sounding deep within their conscience, 
these words of Jesus. Nothing has more power to touch 
others than the witness of him who has himself received the 
benefits of God. Gratitude opens the heart, and the heart 
possesses the secret of moving and convincing others. This 
poor Gerasene departed and published throughout Decapolis 
all that Jesus had done for him, and the name of the Prophet 
became the object of universal admiration . 2 

This account of the healing of the demoniac of Kersa, 

1 Cf. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Luke , ad. 

h. 1. 

3 Luke viii. 36. 


392 


JESUS CHRIST. 


g iven in the second Gospel without any attempt to tone down 
either its colour or its marvellous details, is not a subject of 
difficulty to those who admit the reality of demoniac posses¬ 
sion and the sovereign power of Jesus over spirits ; it is, on 
the contrary, a precious fact from two points of view, foi it 
reveals, with startling clearness, the nature of possession by 
evil spirits and the invincible authority of Jesus. 

The would-be rational school of German theology, whose 
only care is to attenuate the truth in order to render it accep¬ 
table, and to torture the texts to adapt them to its views, can 
only see in the demoniac of Kersa a man afflicted with lycan- 
thropy ; in the impetuous descent of the swine, a herd 
frightened by the demoniac and by the cries of the shepherds ; 
in the healing of the man possessed a magnetic influence 
possessed by Jesus, whose charm and nobility impressed itselt 
even upon madmen. History, seriously treated, does not 
permit such fancies, the superficial audacity of which is but 
a poor disguise for the coward thought beneath. Those who 
do not believe in a personal God, in spirits, in their influence 
upon man, and in the divine mission of Jesus, have no other 
resource than to treat the Gospel as a legend, and the Evan¬ 
gelists as ignorant men ; but even they must halt before the 
greatness of Jesus. The Master, whose moral teaching has 
never been approached, who astonished and still astonishes the 
whole civilised world by his divine wisdom, who conquered all 
the narrow prejudices and the gross ignorance by which he 
was surrounded, cannot be dismissed by a few philosophers. 

If he taught the existence of devils, it was because devils 
exist; if he expelled them, it was because he possessed the 
strength of God to bind them and to cast them out; he never 
sanctioned error or evil, and it is an outrage to his integrity to 
apply to him a system of accommodation, which assumes 
that he outwardly adopted the erroneous doctrines and the 
childish credulity of the crowd. The personality of Jesus 
protects the weakness of those who have written of him ; to 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 393 

challenge them is to challenge him ; to attack them is to 
attack him ; his holiness and wisdom render both him and his 
disciples invulnerable. 

No negative criticism, supported by a pantheist philo¬ 
sophy or a wholly material science, will ever affect him who 
has conquered the world, and whose teaching remains, after 
two thousand years, the law of virtue and of heroism. 

Jesus left the country of the Gerasenes on the morning 
of his arrival there, and returned to Capernaum. The 
approach of the ship, which had left the evening before, 
was seen from afar, and the crowd assembled to receive him. 
They were all waiting for him, says one Evangelist . 1 

The account of the tempest, stilled that very night, and 
of the healing of the demoniac, would naturally spread among 
the people. But the marvels which seemed to spring up in 
his every footstep were no longer much regarded. Jesus only 
passed through the town, and left immediately for Nazareth , 2 
followed by his disciples. He wished to see again his own 
country, where he had tried some weeks before to preach the 
Gospel, at the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, and which 
he had left under excommunication, and threats of death . 3 
The Nazarenes had blasphemed in him the Son of Man: he 
forgot the insult, and with characteristic gentleness, he made 
a new and generous attempt to enlighten them. The 
prejudices by which he had been repelled would perhaps 
vanish before his now well recognized fame. 

He showed himself in the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day. The old fierceness of feeling and violence of hatred 
seemed to have abated. Many, even on hearing him, were 
amazed and filled with admiration ; they did not deny his 
wisdom nor his miracles, but the humbleness of his origin 

1 Luke viii. 40. 

2 Matt. xiii. 53-58; Mark vi. 1-6; cf. Luke iv. 16, etc. 

3 See Appendix N : The Two Visits to Nazareth . 


394 


JESUS CHRIST. 


was the stumbling-block of their faith. This they regarded 
as an objection to his divine mission. How, said they, is not 
he the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and 
of Joseph, of Judas and of Simon? and are not his sisters 
among us ? What world-wide distances may separate the 
impressions and judgments of mankind ! The very lowliness 
of birth, which is now held only to set off and augment the 
merit of a great man, was among the Galilaeans of Nazareth 
the greatest bar to it. Perhaps they would have accepted 
Jesus merely as a teacher on a level with the others, but they 
could not recognize him as the messenger of God, as the 
Messiah. They were blinded with envy which they con¬ 
cealed under the Pharisees’ sophism against Jesus : Will the 
Messiah come of so low degree, will a carpenter deliver the 
people and restore the throne of David ? Even the very 
family of Jesus did not avoid this offence; the superiority of 
an extraordinary man is almost always misunderstood by 
those who have lived in familiar intercourse with him. 

Jesus was astonished and grieved at the obstinate incre¬ 
dulity of his countrymen. His goodness, which faith alone 
could bring into operation, remained for them for ever sealed ; 
he only healed there a few rare suppliants on whom he laid his 
hands. He left Nazareth which he would never see again, 
and in taking leave of his compatriots, whose coldness 
contrasted with the enthusiastic welcome which he had 
received elsewhere from the people, he said sorrowfully to 
them these words, which pourtray his whole destiny : “ A 

prophet is not without honour but in his own country, and 
among his own kin and in his own house.” 

A Nazarene, he was despised by the Nazarenes ; a Jew, 
he was rejected by the Jews ; but the Samaritans and the 
Gentiles welcomed and adored him. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TWELVE. DEATH OF JOHN THE 
BAPTIST. 

The disciples of Jesus were the constant object of his 
solicitude during the whole time in which he preached the 
Gospel in Galilee, where he was so well received by the people, 
but denounced by the Pharisees. They formed his Church 
and his Kingdom. Their number had increased, and from 
them he made a selection ; he chose twelve, whom he called 
apostles. He had shown them, as he promised in words full of 
mystery, the angels of God ascending and descending upon his 
head ; he had taken them with him on the apostolic journeys; 
and now, feeling them to be worthy of a higher confidence, he 
wished them to go forth and preach the Gospel, and to begin 
under his eyes the apprenticeship, as it were, to their 
apostolate. 

The mission of the Twelve to the very midst of the Jewish 
towns would, Jesus felt, extend his own work. His days were 
numbered, and it was necessary that, notwithstanding the 
briefness of his own career, the whole people should hear the 
good news of his name and his Kingdom. The harvest is 
ripe, and the number of the labourers is increased. 

Jesus summoned the Twelve to his presence ; x the sacred 
writings do not clearly define the place of meeting. It was 


1 Matt. x. i ; Mark vi. 7; Luke ix. 1. 
32 


39^ 


JESUS CHRIST. 


probably that same upper chamber in Peter’s house at Caper¬ 
naum where the Master and his disciples were wont to meet 
in the evening after the fatigues of his days entirely spent 
in the fulfilment of God’s work. 

He began, as a wise diplomatist, by limiting their field of 
action : “ Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any 
city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel.” 

By thus restricting the sphere of activity, the Master 
lightened the work and adapted it to the capacity of the 
workers. It was besides the plan of God. Israel, which had 
the promises of salvation, ought to have its first-fruits; the 
time would come later for the Gentiles and the Samaritans. 
Then he added : “ As ye go, preach, saying, The Kingdom of 
heaven is at hand.” 

This contains, in a word, the whole teaching of the 
apostles. No part of their teaching was more sublime or more 
necessary : this implies everything; all else, without this, is 
useless, and it is the special teaching of Jesus. He had 
already announced this in his addresses in the synagogues, 
in his parables to the people, and above all in familiar inter¬ 
course ; and though they were far from gauging its depth, they 
knew enough to say that the Kingdom of God was the King¬ 
dom of the Messiah, that the Messiah was there, that they 
knew him and were his disciples, and that the necessary 
condition for becoming one of his Kingdom was to repent 
and to believe. 

Apostolic work has remained what Jesus made it on this 
day, when, for the first time, he sent forth a few chosen men 
to work in his name. The Kingdom of God is always at hand ; 
the supreme duty, the highest destiny of man, is always to 
receive into his heart the living and personal Spirit of God, of 
which Jesus is the only source ; the condition of receiving this 
generous gift is still faith in the word of Jesus, renunciation 
of ourselves, of our own ideas, passions, interests, vices, 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 397 

even of our own good qualities; in a word, complete repen¬ 
tance and complete sacrifice. 

These new warriors needed a new armour. 

“ I give you,” said Jesus, “ power and authority over 
unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of 
sickness and all manner of disease.” 

These words are evidently divine. It is in the power of 
man to impart ideas, commands, plans and ambitions, and to 
kindle in the souls of his disciples the sacred fire of enthu¬ 
siasm, but he cannot transmit either his genius or his virtue. 
Not one of the greatest men in philosophy, politics, or 
religion, whom we read of in history, has ever laid claim to 
such a power. But Jesus transmits to his disciples the Spirit 
of God, which is in him and of him, and he sends them forth 
armed with these words : 

“ Go, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast 
out devils.” 

The apostles in their ministry will have no other strength 
but the power of God, and this power will only be given them 
for the good of man. By it they will soothe the pain of those 
who suffer, restore the weary, give life to the dead, and free¬ 
dom to those who are under the yoke of the evil spirit. Miracles 
of mercy will be the sign of their mission and the proof of their 
power. They will follow the example of their Master; his Spirit 
will work in them and by them. Their faith will incorporate 
them with him, and will remain the condition of their super¬ 
human activity. The power to heal physical ills and to com¬ 
mand death may be suspended, but the power to influence souls 
and the authority over evil spirits will never fail. After all it is 
a matter of small importance that the body suffers and dies if 
the soul lives, healthy, free, and comforted. 

Jesus continued his Messianic functions by his apostolic 
work, a work of deliverance, justice, and infinite mercy, which 
draws men’s minds away from those evil doctrines which 
oppress and debase them, which quickens the dead conscience, 


JESUS CHRIST. 


398 

gives the comfort of God to those who despair, and heals 
the troubles and infirmities which impede the world’s pro¬ 
gress. 

At the same time that Jesus gave his apostles the strength 
of the Spirit, he pointed out what virtues he demanded from 
them: the kindness which is ready to sacrifice itself, the 
unselfishness which forgets itself, the poverty which forsakes 
all, the confidence which places absolute trust in God, 
the perseverance and courage which nothing can disturb. 
“ Freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, 
nor silver, nor any money in your purses ; nor scrip for your 
journey; neither two coats ; neither shoes, but only sandals ; 
with no staff but that of the traveller ; 1 for the workman is 
worthy of his meat.” 

This is a picture of an apostle, such as Jesus would have 
him. He who has received everything from God should give 
freely, and imitate the generosity of God. His worth is 
nothing without the Divine munificence of which he is the 
object; that which he has received for nothing he should give 
for nothing. The Spirit can neither be bought nor sold. He 
who receives it is happy; he who imparts it still happier. 
This increase of joy will be his treasure, and will suffice for 
his reward. 

Expansiveness is in proportion to goodness. The best 
people are the most open-hearted. Of all forces the Spirit of 
God is the most easily imparted. Those who radiate their 
goodness make themselves loved, and by opening themselves 


1 According to St. Matthew, Jesus forbids the staff and shoes. Accord¬ 
ing to St. Mark, he permits and allows them. The reconciliation of the 
two texts, which are apparently contradictory, is easy. The staff which 
is forbidden is evidently the tnatah , which indicates an object that may 
be used for defence or offence; the one which is allowed is the traveller’s 
staff, the maschan. Both meanings are implied in the papSov of the 
Greeks. As to the shoes, those which are permitted are the sandais 
worn by the poor. Cf. Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae , ad. h. J. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 399 

to others they encourage confidence in return. This is the 
most valuable gift for an apostle. 

As he is generous he will be disinterested. He should have 
no earthly cares, for what has he to do with the riches of this 
world? He possesses the incorruptible treasures of God. In 
seeing him thus regardless of those things which pass away, 
men will understand that he lives by those things which do 
not pass away ; his poverty will help to make them under¬ 
stand the reality of those imperishable treasures of the 
Kingdom which is announced to them. He need not disquiet 
himself about the necessaries of life, for God has ordered all 
things so that the workman who is worthy of his meat shall 
always find it. The useless man will disappear, but he who 
does good work is worthy to live, and he will live by the 
Providence of the Father. 

The soul of Jesus overflowed with this filial confidence; 
he wished his apostles to be filled with it, for it is the expres¬ 
sion of the love for the heavenly Father, whose name and 
whose goodness he had revealed to them. 

The apostle should live by the gifts of those to whom 
he preaches the Gospel; that is all that he will receive, all 
that he will ask. Gratitude from those whom he heals and 
saves will not be wanting. Terrestrial benefits may be re¬ 
ceived with ingratitude; the gifts of God, never: the former 
do not make men better; the latter sanctify them. 

Jesus instructed these members of the Church militant 
even to the smallest details of their metnod of warfare. In 
this first attempt to preach the Word, he did not wish them 
to go alone, but two and two, so that the one should sustain 
the other . 1 

He did not send them either to the public assemblies 

1 We shall certainly be right in ascribing to the choice of Jesus the 
order of the apostles in couples, as it is given by the Evangelists. 


400 


JESUS CHRIST. 


of the synagogues or to the multitude. He feared for them, 
still timid and inexperienced as they were, the perils of a 
clamorous and stirring apostolate ; he knew the vehemence 
of popular passion, so easily roused and so difficult to calm ; 
he was aware of the subtlety and craft of the doctors; he 
wished to save his followers from contests too hard for them ; 
and while waiting to give them, with the fulness of his Spirit, 
the whole world to evangelise, he recommended to them 
a more humble and quiet work, a sort of individual and 
domestic mission, of which the family would be the centre 
and standpoint. 

“ And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, en¬ 
quire who in it is most worthy; and there abide till ye go 
thence: and when ye come into an house, say, Peace be to 
this house; and if the house be worthy, let your peace come 
upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to 
you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your 
words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off 
the dust off your feet.” They are for you wicked houses and 
towns, you have nothing in common with them ; treat them 
as if they were Gentiles. 

“ Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than 
for that city.” 

He who is sent by Jesus is a messenger of peace; like 
his Master, he knows neither violence nor oppression ; he is 
of the race of the children of God, of the peacemakers, of 
those who are gentle and meek. 

His “schelam ” is not an empty conventional greeting, it 
has a sacramental virtue, being the living and effective ex¬ 
pression of the Spirit of God which it conveys. This Spirit 
overflows from all whom it inspires, and by them it is ever 
ready to influence those around; it enriches not only those 
who receive it, but those who give it, and if rejected it returns 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 4OI 

as a blessing to him who has offered it. But the fate of those 
souls who rebel against the divine call is a dreadful one. 
The ruin of the accursed cities is not so terrible as the state 
of the man forsaken by the love of God, which he has driven 
from his heart; sinking helpless into the abyss, which opens 
before all from whom God has withdrawn his presence. 

Then Jesus began to depict in forcible terms the difficulties 
and dangers of proselytism in the midst of the world, and to 
exhort his disciples to those heroic virtues without which 
their efforts would be in vain. His conception is not confined 
to the present moment, it extends to all time; it throws light 
upon the future, and embraces all apostolic work. By point¬ 
ing out to his disciples the difficulties of their mission, he 
acted with the wisdom of a teacher who increases an hundred¬ 
fold the courage of those whom he moulds to his views, by 
giving them a spirit superior to danger. 

“ Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” 
The sheep are defenceless; the wolves, ravenous and armed 
for attack. 

“ Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. 
But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the coun¬ 
cils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye 
shall be brought before governors and kings, for my sake, for 
a testimony against them and the Gentiles. 

“ But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or 
what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same 
hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but 
the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. 

“ And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, 
and the father the child; and the children shall rise up against 
their parents and cause them to be put to death. And ye 
shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake, but he that en- 
dureth to the end, the same shall be saved. 

“ But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into 


402 


JESUS CHRIST. 


another in haste ; for verily I say unto you, ye shall not have 
gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come.” 

Such is the fate of the apostles, foretold by the Master: 
the hostility of men, violent opposition, persecution, judg¬ 
ments, tortures, hatred, death. It is the first hint of the sad 
destiny of the Messiah. Before unfolding it to his disciples, 
Jesus told them what they must suffer themselves; a stern 
revelation, which would help them to understand, when the 
time came, the mystery of the Cross. 

After this gloomy picture, which must have frightened the 
little group of apostles, or at least dismayed it, Jesus went 
on to allude to the difficulties, opposition, and violence of 
which he himself was the object, and which was increasing 
from day to day. Our lot is the same, he added, “ Do you 
not call me Master and Lord?” You are my disciples, and 
you will be treated as I am. “The disciple is not above his 
master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the 
disciple to be as his master and the servant as his lord.” 

Then reminding them of the horrible insult which he had 
received from the Pharisees only the day before, he said to 
them: “ If they have called the master of the house Beelze¬ 
bub, how much more shall they call them of his household ? ” 

And what were these persecuted ones to do when these 
struggles came ? 

Jesus asks of them prudence and simplicity: two gentle 
virtues which supplement one another; for prudence without 
simplicity becomes craft, and simplicity without prudence 
becomes childishness: craft deceives, and childish simplicity 
leads us to destruction. 

They are not to resist evil by violence, they must conquer 
it by gentleness, or avoid it, and flee from it. The apostle is 
disarmed of all weapons of attack, he is not the wolf that 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 403 

rends, but the sheep that is slaughtered ; he is always the 
victim, never the tormentor. 

But no difficulty, no danger, no violence will subdue him, 
he will persevere in his work even to the end, and will never 
know weakness or fear. 

“ Go,” said Jesus, “there is nothing covered that shall not 
be revealed ; and hid, that shall not be known.” The work 
of God, obscure and unknown, shall see the light of full day. 
“ What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and 
what ye hear in the ear , 1 preach ye upon the house-tops . 2 

“ Go, fear nothing, and endure to the end.” 

He, who is sent by Jesus into a hostile world, without 
money, without provision, without a staff, without a sword, 
without earthly strength ; humble, poor, meek, and gentle, is 
stronger than any human power : the body may be killed, but 
the soul will escape, and the soul is everything for the apostle, 
for in it dwells the Spirit of God by which he lives. He need 
fear no one, except him who has the power to cast the soul 
and the body into Gehenna. God, invincible, protects those 
who fear him ; he watches over every creature, the smallest as 
the greatest, but those who love him are his children, and 
he feels for them the care of a father. 

“ Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of 
them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. As 
for you, the very hairs of your head are numbered. Fear ye 
not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” 


1 An allusion to a custom in force in the synagogues and schools. The 
reader of the Law in the former and the rabbi in the latter had before 
him an assessor or interpreter. This man spoke in a low voice into his 
ear, and he repeated aloud to the assembly what he heard. (Lightfoot, 
Horae Hebraicae, p. 253.) 

2 Another allusion to the religious customs of the Jews. On the eve 
of the Sabbath the Hasan announced from the roof of a high house 
the commencement of the Sabbath with the sound of ten trumpets 
or in a loud voice, just as the Mahometans are summoned to prayer by 
the muezzin from the top of the minarets. 


404 


JESUS CHRIST. 


In order to strengthen their courage he raised their hopes. 
The conception of Jesus always embraces all things, the heaven 
and the earth, time and eternity, the Father and all his creatures. 

However difficult your work may be, he seems to say to 
his disciples, “ Go,” be a testimony unto me in the presence of 
all men. “ Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, 
him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven ; 
but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny 
before my Father which is in heaven.” 

To be confessed of Jesus before the Father, the beginning 
and end of all things, to belong to him for ever, to be with 
him and in him in the fulness of light, love and life, that is 
a hope which should make the heart of the apostle rejoice 
even through all his tribulations. 

With this hope he can face all pain. To be denied by 
Jesus, to be separated from him, that is real death, the only 
death he has to fear. It was moreover necessary that the 
disciples should know that the work to which they, as apostles, 
dedicated themselves, was a work of strife and combat to the 
death. 

The Master who had commanded them to say : “ Peace be 
to this house and to this town,” who had taught them on the 
mountain the blessedness of the peacemaker, he, all gentleness 
and peace himself, who sows the fruitful seed of peace by 
bringing truth on earth, he it is who is destined to raise 
the reign of justice in the world, a fearful tempest, a tempest 
of violent men, the enemies of all righteousness and truth, of 
all sacrifice and love. 

“ Be not deceived : I am not come to send peace on the 
earth, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance against 
his father, the daughter against her mother, and a man’s foes 
shall be they of his own household.” 

To come to me you must leave all, for “he that loveth 
f ather or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” The 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 405 

road that leads to me is a road of pain : “ he that taketh not 
his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me.” He 
does not wish his apostles to shrink from death, and in words 
which have inspired countless numbers of martyrs he teaches 
them the divine secret: “Fear not to lay down your life for 
my sake in this world: he that findeth his life shall lose it; 
and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” 

To sacrifice the life of a day is to acquire eternal life in 
the bosom of the Father ; to set store by the life which 
fails is to become unworthy of that which never fails. The 
body ought to be sacrificed to the soul, the soul and the body 
to the Spirit of God. 

The body which desires to live for itself loses its highest 
activity, it ceases to be the glorious instrument of thought, it 
dishonours itself, it is choked with matter. The soul which 
relies on itself, refusing to unite itself to God, renounces 
the fulness of life, and is restless iq its own nothingness. 

Sacrifice, the universal law of life, will be the law of the 
apostolate. 

The discourse of Jesus to the Twelve ended with a gentle 
word of encouragement. As he felt himself in absolute and 
filial communion with the Father, so he felt himself by his 
spirit in communion with his disciples. The last tie became 
ever closer, and Jesus loved to see himself living in them. 

“ He that receiveth you receiveth me,” he said to them ; 

“ and he that receiveth me receiveth the Father that sent me. 
He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall 
receive a prophet’s reward ; and he that receiveth a righteous 
man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous 
man’s reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of 
these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a dis¬ 
ciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in nowise lose his reward.” 

To receive Jesus is to understand him ; to enter into the 
same Spirit of truth, of righteousness and of peace ; to be in- 


406 


JESUS CHRIST. 


corporated in him. To receive his disciple, the prophet or the 
righteous man, is to help in the work which they are fulfilling, 
to render oneself worthy of the same reward. The smallest 
act will not be forgotten ; the widow’s mite will be remem¬ 
bered, and the glass of water counted. 

This discourse, this intimate communion, summed up by 
one of the witnesses in a few brief sentences, which all bear 
the mark of Jesus, may be considered the monument of his 
wisdom as a teacher. 

No great man, no chief of a school, ever set a more sublime 
ideal before his votaries. Men of great genius are almost 
always inferior teachers ; their very eminence and their origi¬ 
nality are a hindrance to them ; they cannot perpetuate them¬ 
selves. God has denied them succession. They carry their 
secret with them to the tomb, leaving those whom they have 
charmed, and for the moment enlightened, to their weakness 
and mediocrity. When the conqueror vanishes from sight, 
his generals can only divide the spoil and break the unity of 
his empire ; the disciples of the philosopher exaggerate his 
system and alter his teaching ; the laws of a legislator become 
a dead letter ; and the inspired artist, who bequeathes his 
methods to his school, without the art of applying them, is 
soon travestied by the very followers who revere his genius. 

The incapacity of man to perpetuate himself by disciples 
worthy of him, results from two powerful causes: the 
inferiority of the disciples, and the incapacity of the Master 
to leave them his living Spirit. Jesus alone was able to re¬ 
move these obstacles. He imparted the very Spirit of God to 
his simple and uncultured followers ; and this inherent force 
gradually fashioned them to his own likeness. They became 
such as he would have them, realising in its strength the 
type of the apostle at once austere and gentle, humble and 
irresistible, generous and persecuted. 

The impulse given by the Master is not exhausted. Its 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 407 

vitality is invincible, like the Spirit with which it is one ; 
vigorous in the midst of a decrepit world, victorious in the 
midst of hostile mankind, it asserts itself from century to 
century by ever fresh creations. Jesus with his divine power 
of transmission is reproducing himself continually; when all 
seems exhausted and inert, new men at once arise in his 
likeness, who are the incarnation of his type. Their life is 
his very word put into action. No age has been without such 
apostles, generous and expansive souls, whose lives might be 
pourtrayed by the words of Jesus. 

The Twelve, strengthened by the teaching of the Master, 
went at his bidding two by two, to preach the Gospel in the 
towns and villages of Galilee. 

Jesus, accompanied by other disciples, continued his work. 
His apostolic zeal never waned ; he never tired, he gave him¬ 
self no repose. His days were spent in work, his nights in 
prayer. 

It was about this time that the death of John the Baptist 1 
occurred, a short time after his message to Jesus and a few 
days before the Passover of the year 29. 

The writers of the Gospels alone relate the details; they 
learnt them from the disciples of John, who were accurately 
informed about it and who came from Machaerus to tell Jesus 
what had happened. 

Josephus, alluding to the violent death of the Baptist, 2 
attributes it vaguely to the easily-aroused suspicions of Herod 
Antipas, who knowing his authority with the people, feared he 
might cause an insurrection. The accounts given in the Gospels 
throw much light upon the narrative of the Jewish historian, 
which indeed it would be difficult to understand without 
them. Nothing in the attitude of the Forerunner suggested 

1 Matt. xiv. 1-12 ; Mark vi. 14-29 5 <*• Luke ix * 7 - 9 - 

2 Antiq. xviii. 5.2. 


408 


JESUS CHRIST. 


a political revolutionist; but the fears of the tetrarch, which 
at first seem absolutely baseless, become very plausible, if we 
consider that John by severely reproving Herod for his adul¬ 
terous and incestuous alliance with Herodias may have roused 
the popular feeling against him. The part played by the 
princess is quite natural under the circumstances, and it is 
astonishing to find any critics ready to throw doubt upon the 
matter. 1 

Herod’s prisoner was under no misapprehension concern¬ 
ing his fate. Herodias had never forgiven him ; her hatred 
was implacable. The imprisonment of him, who had publicly 
condemned her, did not calm her resentment nor satisfy her 
vengeance for a moment; she must have his life. She plotted 
with the courtiers, Pharisees, and Herodians, who had also been 
scathed by the plain-speaking of the anchorite, and watched 
her opportunity to be rid of her enemy. 

In spite, however, of her influence over the tetrarch, she 
could not succeed in extorting from him this fresh crime. 
Herod was afraid of the Prophet; he did not dare to face the 
anger of the people, which would certainly burst forth at the 
news of his death. The righteousness and holiness of John held 
him in check ; he had a regard for him, even took his advice 
and listened to him willingly. But nothing thwarts the vin¬ 
dictive spirit of a wounded woman, she has pertinacity and 
craft which will conquer everything. 

The opportunity which she looked and longed for came at 
last. It was Herod’s Feast, probably not his birthday, but 
the anniversary of his coronation. The tetrarch with his court 
was at Machaerus, where he gave a sumptuous banquet to the 
tribunes and the great men of Galilee. During the feast, the 
daughter of Herodias, prompted by her mother, entered the 
banquet-hall, and, according to Jewish custom, to do full 


T. Keim, Jesus voji Nazar a, II. Band. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 409 

honour to the occasion, she began to dance. The girl 
forgot that she was dancing before the man who had dis¬ 
honoured her father’s hearth. 

The tetrarch was flattered and touched “ Ask whatsoever 
thou wilt,” he said to her, “ and I will give it thee.” And he 
swore a solemn oath that he would give her what she asked 
even to the half of his kingdom. 

She left the room and went to her mother : “ What shall 
I ask ? ” 

“The head of John the Baptist,” Herodias replied without 
hesitation. 

The girl returned immediately to the banquet-hall, and 
approaching the king: “I wish,” she said, “that you give 
me here immediately, on a charger, the head of John the 
Baptist.” 

At this unexpected and horrible request the whole 
character of the prince betrayed itself, a mixture of weak 
kindness, timidity, and false religion. He was grieved at the 
thought of shedding blood, but how could he draw back ? 
He had sworn. The thought of his guests, who had heard 
him take the oath and who were perhaps enemies of the 
Baptist, intimidated him. He dared not refuse to commit 
the crime. He sent one of his guards and ordered him to bring 
the head of John on a charger. The man went and beheaded 
him in the depth of his prison, and brought his head on a 
charger, and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her 
mother. 

Herodias was avenged. 

This was the tragical end of the Forerunner of Jesus. 
Such men cannot finish their career in peace, in a good old 
age, as the patriarchs of old. A violent death is more suitable 
for the prophets, the heroes of truth and justice, of right and 
virtue. They have fought for their victory ; they have blasted 
vice ; they have proclaimed in their weakness in the face of 


4 io 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the powerful and the wicked, the non licet of an inflexible 
conscience. It is right that they should set the seal to their 
life, their teaching, their courage, their love and their mission 
with their blood. 

God claims them first according to their desire. The 
world hates them, the world kills them ; it hopes to stifle 
the voice of righteousness, it only gives it immortality ; for 
the blood shed for God has supreme eloquence. 

The non licet , the word of inflexible integrity in the 
face of violence, stratagem, and hatred, will never find a more 
moving illustration than this head of John presented on a 
charger to Herodias, an adulterous, incestuous woman, and a 
homicide. 

John preceded Jesus to death, and died preparing his 
way. His blood is mingled with that of-the prophets, his 
forefathers, and with that of the Lamb, as he called Jesus, 
who was soon himself to be sacrificed. The way of the Kingdom 
from the beginning of the world even to the end of time is a 
way trailed with blood. 

The death of John the Baptist profoundly moved the 
people in Judaea as in Galilee, but they did not rise in rebel¬ 
lion ; the people have no initiative, not even in revolutions; 
and none of their leaders gave free course to his anger. The 
religious rulers in Judaea trembled under the hard hand of 
Pilate; and the great men of Galilee, Sadducees, and all 
Herod’s courtiers, were perhaps not displeased with this act 
of political rigour; courtiers will justify everything, even 
crime; the Prophet had soon come to appear to them, as to 
their sovereign, a public danger; the Pharisees themselves 
saw, not without secret satisfaction, the disappearance of him 
who had not spared them harsh truths, and who persisted in 
bearing witness to the man who had become the object of 
their hatred. 

The memory of John was held in veneration by the 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 4II 

people ; after a lapse of six years, Herod’s crime was held in 
vivid recollection. A war, having reference to the frontier- 
line, broke out between the tetrarch and king Aretas of 
Arabia, the father of the repudiated woman, and Herod’s 
troops were cut in pieces. 

This disaster drew a cry from the conscience of the crowd : 
“ It is God,” they said, “who is avenging the murder of John 
the Baptist.” 

A tradition, preserved for us by St. Jerome, relates that 
Herodias, on receiving the bleeding head of her victim from 
the hands of her daughter, vindictively pierced with needles 
the tongue that had protested against her crime, and ordered 
that his body should be cast into the ravines of Machaerus to 
the dogs and the vultures. The disciples of the Prophet came 
and took the body to bury it, and they went and told Jesus 
what had happened. 

Even if Herodias was happy, in her gratified hatred, the 
tetrarch remained sad and restless. The murder took posses¬ 
sion of him, the thought of John haunted him. He was 
superstitious and yielding by nature, incapable of resolution, 
deceitful like all weak characters. He was terrified by his 
crime, but he felt no remorse. The renown of Jesus, which 
had hitherto been indifferent to him, now caused him fear. 
The apostles, dispersed through the towns and villages, had, no 
doubt, revived the eager prepossession of public opinion with 
regard to their Master. 

Criticisms and discussions were never exhausted, and, as 
usual, prejudices led men’s minds astray. It was plain that 
Jesus was a prophet, but what prophet? It was believed, at 
that time, by the people, and even by the schools, that the souls 
of the dead could return to the living. This strange belief was 
applied to Jesus : some said, “ It is Elias,” but others said, “ It 
is one of the old prophets,” and the adherents of John declared 
that John himself had risen from the dead. 

33 


412 


JESUS CHRIST. 


All these popular reports reached the court of the tetrarch, 
where no doubt Jesus was also talked about. The name of 
John, associated with that of Jesus, troubled Herod’s soul 
and he became perplexed. He knew not what to think, and, 
yielding to the superstition of the crowd, he said, This is 
John whom I beheaded, he is risen from the dead, and 
therefore he does mighty works ; and Herod was afraid, and 
desired to see Jesus. 

The Twelve returned from their first journey. They found 
their Master at Capernaum, and told him all they had done 
and taught. 

But the multitude was now gathered to the place, men 
were constantly going in and out, and the house was crowded. 

Jesus and his disciples, says one of the Evangelists, had 
not even time to eat. 1 

He felt the need of close communion with his disciples, 
and wished to procure for them some days of silence and 
tranquillity. The news of the death of John was a sad fore¬ 
boding of his own. The time was at hand to initiate them 
into the mystery of his sufferings. 

He arose: 

“ Come apart into a desert place,” he said to them, “ and 
rest awhile.” 

He entered into a ship with his disciples and commanded 
them to cross the lake, and to row to the eastern shore, to¬ 
wards Bethsaida. 


1 Mark vi. 31. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE MESSIANIC CRISIS IN GALILEE. 

The north-east shore of the Lake of Gennesareth, between the 
mouth of the Jordan and the Wady Djebarieh, is a fertile, well- 
watered and verdant plain, known at the present day by the 
name of El Batihah. It describes a large triangle of which 
the lake forms the base, the Jordan and the mountains of 
Gaulonitis the two sides. Bethsaida-Julias, which must not 
be confused with Bethsaida in Galilee, was situated at the apex 
of this triangle, not far from the river, and half a league from 
the lake, on a little hill, which is a continuation of the higher 
hills of the Gaulonite range. 1 All this district of Lower 
Gaulonitis, together with Auranitis, Batanaea, Ituraea, and 
Trachonitis, formed the tetrarchy of Philip the brother of 
Antipas. This prince had none of the evil genius of his 
family ; he was gentle, upright, and peaceable in character, 
and resembled his father only in his love of the arts. From 
the time of his coronation he was engaged in building two 
towns, the one at the source of the Jordan, on the very site 
of the ancient Panias, which he called Caesarea, in honour of 
Caesar; and the other near the lake, not far from the little 
village of Bethsaida, which he called Julias, in honour of Julia, 
the daughter of Augustus. 2 

1 The situation of Bethsaida-Julias, at the precise spot we indicate, 
seems incontestable. It is clearly indicated by Josephus, Bell. Jud ., iii. 
jo, 7, and by Pliny, Hist. Nat. I. V. c. xv., § 15. Cf. Victor Gudrin, 
Description de la Palestine, 3e partie, La Galil'ee, I. 

2 A ntiq. xviii. 2, 1; Bell. Jud. ii. 9, 1; Antiq. xviii. 4, 6. 


414 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Nothing remains of the ancient town but the mount 
El-Tell on which it was built, and some scattered ruins ; 
it has disappeared like so many other cities of Palestine of 
the time of Jesus ; its monuments of basalt are utterly ruined 
and the fragments of stone have been used to build Bedouins’ 
huts. Parts of the lintels and pillars may still be traced in 
the bare walls of their miserable hovels. It is useless to look 
for the mausoleum of Philip, who wished to be buried in 
Julias ; even the name of the tetrarch is forgotten, but the 
natives are familiar with that of Jesus, and they show a 
gigantic tree, near the spring of El-Tell, under the shade of 
whose mighty branches they say that the Messiah used to 
rest. 

It was towards this plain and the lonely hills in the 
neighbourhood of Bethsaida that Jesus wished to retreat with 
his disciples. The lake can be crossed from Capernaum to 
the shore of Lower Gaulonitis within an hour. It is probable 
that the ship which bore Jesus would make for land not far 
from the present site of Dukah. 

His sudden departure was soon known in the town. The 
crowd, having seen the ships sail towards the mouth of the 
Jordan, followed the road, which skirts the lake, so as to 
rejoin the Prophet. Jesus, who directed his steps to the 
mountain as soon as he had landed, did not wait to see the 
people arrive. Men flocked to him from all the neighbouring 
towns ; he had come to seek solitude, but, by his Father’s 
will, a whole multitude was come to him. Their eagerness 
touched him, and he welcomed them all with kindness. 

The enthusiastic regard of the people, which public men 
find so intoxicating, did not affect his calm ; it neither elated 
nor troubled him. If by wise caution he sometimes mistrusted 
the populace, yet he always saw in them unhappy men 
whom he had come to save. He cast upon ‘them looks 
full of compassion ; he knew the troubles of their hearts, they 
seemed to him as sheep without a shepherd ; and then he 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 415 

would heal their infirmities and teach them. This solitary 
region seemed favourable to Jesus for the continuation of his 
apostolic work. He began to speak of the Kingdom of God, 
from the height of a hill to which he had withdrawn, followed 
by the crowd. In listening to him they forgot how the hours 
passed. The day was drawing in, the sun had disappeared 
behind the mountains of Galilee, and Jesus was still speaking. 
Twilight in the East is short, and night falls suddenly. 

The apostles, feeling anxiety for the people, came to their 
Master and said : “ This is a desert place, and it is already 
late : send them away that they may go into the villages 
and hamlets round about and find shelter and food for 
themselves.” 

Jesus said to them : “ I have compassion on the multitude 
because they continue with me now three days, and have 
nothing to eat. If I send them away fasting they will faint 
in the way ; for divers of them came from far.” “ Give ye 
them to eat,” he added quietly. This reply filled them with 
amazement. “ What,” said they, “ shall we go and buy two 
hundred pennyworth of bread and give them to eat ? ” The 
power of their Master was evidently far from the thoughts of 
his disciples. Not one of them dreamed of telling him that 
he could provide for them all. He seemed, however, to wish 
to rouse their confidence in him. 

“ Philip,” he cried, “ whence shall we buy bread that 
these may eat ? ” 

But Philip replied like the others : “Two hundred penny¬ 
worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of 
them may take a little.” Then, addressing himself to all, 
Jesus said : “How many loaves have ye ? go and see.” 

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, 
enquired and said to him : “We have only five loaves and 
two fishes ; but what are they among so many ? There are 
more than five thousand men, not counting the women and 
children.” 


4 i 6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The repeated questions of Jesus only confirmed the 
apostles in their feeling of helplessness. But Jesus knew' 
what he would do, and the more their helplessness was 
established, so much the more impressive would the work 
which he meditated appear in their eyes. 

“ Bring me,” said he, “ the five loaves and the two fishes, 
and make the multitude sit down on the grass, by fifties in a 
company.” 

The apostles obeyed, and the multitude spread themselves 
in two ranks by fifties, on the green grass of the hillside. 

The Feast of the Passover was at hand. 

Jesus, not being able this year to celebrate it at Jerusalem, 
because of the Sanhedrin, which had condemned him to death, 
wished to observe it, in his own way, in the desert. 

He took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looked up 
to heaven, and, when he had given thanks, he blessed and 
brake the loaves, and gave pieces to his disciples for them to 
place before the people ; then he divided the two fishes, and 
he gave to them as much as they would. The bread and 
the fishes were multiplied in his hands. They all did eat and 
were filled. 

“Gather up the fragments that remain,” he said to his 
disciples, “ that nothing be lost.” 

And with the fragments of bread and of fish they filled 
twelve baskets. 

The crowd were struck with admiration and wonder at the 
sight of this miracle. 

“ This is, of a truth,” they cried, “ that Prophet that should 
come into the world.” 

The power which multiplies and transforms things, is the 
same as that which creates and preserves them. God, calling 
beings into existence and life at a word, and Jesus feeding 
five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes, are one and 
the same. It is the same power, the same wisdom, the same 
goodness. 



% 


From the Painting by Murillo . 



























MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 417 

Every time the Son of Man lets his infinite power mani¬ 
fest itself; by healing the sick, bringing the dead to life, or 
by satisfying the hungry ; he obeys a feeling of compassion. 

It is by lovingkindness that God works in the universe, 
and by it that Jesus also works. 

The sight of this multitude flocking to him from all sides, 
following where he led, even to the midst of the desert, with¬ 
out thinking to provide themselves with food, and their 
eagerness to hear him, moved him to compassion ; he did not 
wish them to suffer and endure hunger because of him. He, 
who rejected as a temptation of the Evil One the suggestion 
that he should change the stones into bread for his own 
nourishment, did not hesitate to appeal to his Father for the 
people who surrounded him. 

We should inadequately estimate the power to which this 
miracle bears witness, if we restricted it to this single marvel. 
Jesus has done more than satisfy five thousand men in 
a desert ; he, throughout all ages, nourishes man, ever in 
this world threatened with destitution. Man has need of 
material bread, and he cannot obtain it except by labour, which 
renders the earth fruitful, by thrift which husbands the fruit 
of his labour, by justice which secures to him its possession, 
and by charity which distributes it wisely. 

The great, the universal miracle of the Saviour is to have 
given him, with his Spirit, these divine virtues. Henceforth no 
man can die of hunger in the Kingdom founded by him. Even 
the most miserable are received, and find there abundance in 
feasts of brotherly love. 

This was the most popular miracle that Jesus ever did. 
It does not refer, as the others, to a single individual, but to 
a whole multitude ; and it has a prophetic significance, for 
it is a new and splendid revelation of one of the highest 
functions of the Messiah. 

The thousands of men without provisions represent 
famished mankind ; no food can nourish and satisfy them; 


418 


JESUS CHRIST. 


One Being alone, God ; he it is whom we must see in the 
symbol of the loaves and fishes. In the desert of this world, 
Jesus draws mankind to him ; he brings men together, 
groups them in organised companies, gives them order and 
peace, and standing in the midst, he appeases their hunger; 
the heavenly food multiplies in his hands and he chooses 
apostles to distribute it with inexhaustible generosity and 
power. 

This scene of the miraculous feeding of the multitude in 
the desert at Bethsaida, remained vivid, even to its smallest 
details, in the memory of those who witnessed it. All four 
Evangelists relate it, 1 and in spite of the variations in their 
accounts, they supplement and in no way contradict one 
another. 

Here is a historical fact which the criticism which denies 
the supernatural is bound to set aside; for it is essentially 
miraculous, and no rationalist explanation can remove its 
character. 

It must either be taken as it is, or it must be suppressed. 
To explain the satisfying of the hunger of the crowd by the 
inward contentment or transport into which they were 
thrown by the eloquence of Jesus, or to pretend that each one 
drew upon his own private store and was content with little, 
is a mere childish expedient, which does not deserve to be 
discussed, and only provokes a smile. 

The mythical interpretation, in its attempts to show how 
the story came into being, brings us face to face with insur¬ 
mountable difficulties. It refers us to the manna of the desert 
and the quails, 2 to the store of flour and oil of the widow of 
Zarephath, a store which did not waste during the time of 
famine, 3 and again, to Elisha’s feeding a hundred men with 

1 Matt. xiv. 13 21; Mark viii. 1-9; Luke ix. 11-18 ; John iv. 1-13. 

2 Exod. xvi.; Deut. xi. 

8 I. Kings xvii. 8. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 419 

twenty loaves and a little crushed wheat during a time of 
dearth. 1 

But there is a wide distinction between vague analogies 
and the circumstantial account of a miracle, full of details 
which it is beyond the power of myth to explain. 

It does not tell us why there were five loaves, and five 
loaves of barley, why there were fishes and two of them, why 
five thousand people and in groups of fifty, why two ranks of 
a hundred, and why twelve baskets. The historian who 
does not disdain the express testimony of the sacred writings, 
and who does not allow a philosophy to come between his 
mind and the reality, cannot hesitate for a moment. How¬ 
ever marvellous the scene may be, we find ourselves fairly in 
the domain of history. No amount of resemblance between 
a series of facts, occurring at distant intervals in the history of 
a people, can authorize us to see in them mere legends sprung 
from the imagination, in defiance of the testimony of eye¬ 
witnesses. No narrative could stand against such a theory. 

Further, the truth of the miraculous increase of the loaves 
is secured against the mythical school which denies it, and 
against the rationalist school which tries to attenuate it, by the 
position which it occupies in the life of Jesus. It is not a ques¬ 
tion of any particular event, of one miracle more or less in 
the vast number of marvels of which his life is full ; it is 
a question of a work which should mark the end of his 
apostolic career in Galilee, promote its climax, and make 
manifest its result. 

The preaching of Jesus had for its aim to show to all 
that the Kingdom of the Messiah had come, to make known 
the nature of this Kingdom, and to prove that he himself was 
its founder and its head. It was with this view that he preached 
from town to town, from village to village, healed the sick, 
promulgated his new precepts, drew to him all who were 


1 II. Kines iv. 42. 


420 


JESUS CHRIST. 


willing to come, fought the prejudices of the people and the 
doctors, passed his nights in prayer, attached his disciples to 
him and surrounded himself with apostles. After two months 
of incessant activity, in spite of the perfidious opposition of 
the Scribes and Pharisees, which never ceased, in spite of some 
partial failures, such as his two attempts at Nazareth, the 
whole people had been put in motion. The multitude was in 
the hand of Jesus, he was its master; charmed by his words 
and his teaching, excited by his miracles, it followed him 
whithersoever he went. 

In the beginning of his ministry, he could escape from the 
crowd by entering into a ship, and saying to Peter, “ Launch 
out into the deep,” or, if it pursued him, by stealing away into 
the desert. Now the desert itself no longer protected him; 
they went out to join him there. Jesus was not merely a 
Prophet in the eyes of the people, a messenger of God, as 
Nicodemus called him, and as the people themselves had 
called him more than once: he was the Messiah. The 
solitude of Bethsaida, after the miracle of the multiplication 
of the loaves, resounded with one long cry : “ This is of a 
truth the expected Prophet, he who was to come, he who was 
prophesied by Moses, this is the Son of David.” 

This popular acclamation, though apparently the triumph 
of Jesus, was in reality a most formidable danger to his work. 
He had to display all his strength, all his composure, all 
the resources of a divine wisdom to overcome it. 

He was indeed the expected Messenger, the promised 
Messiah, but not the Messiah dreamed of by the mistaken 
conscience of the people. He was not the carnal, terrestrial, 
national, political Messiah ; he was the spiritual, celestial, 
human, religious Messiah. His Kingdom has nothing in 
common with the kingdoms of this world. The whole aim of 
his preaching was to disclose the nature of his Kingdom, 
sometimes cautiously by symbols and parables, at other times 
in positive and vigorous terms. He laid claim to nothing, 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 421 

except to the Spirit of God ; he only wished to save and to 
heal, to proclaim the truth, to pour life into the souls that 
were dead. Never in any case did he say a word or perform 
an act which could flatter the ambition of the people or the 
false ideas of the doctors. But the doctors did not wish to 
understand, and the dull conscience of the mass could not 
see. Only a few chosen ones both heard and understood. 

With the exception of the disciples and the apostles, the 
crowd, in spite of its enthusiasm, remained blind. It did not 
rise to the height of the teaching of Jesus relative to the true 
Messianic reign, nor did it free itself from its own prejudices 
relative to the true Messiah. 

These ardent and warlike Galilaeans were always possessed 
by the dream of Judas the Gaulonite. What they hoped for 
was an armed leader, a conqueror, a liberator. Political 
passion inflamed and excited them. Their enthusiasm for 
Jesus was a paroxysm ; they encouraged one another, and 
formed a plot to carry Jesus away by force, perhaps to take 
him to Jerusalem and to proclaim him king in the face of 
the people. 1 

It was a critical moment. Popular movements are 
terrible ; even the strongest are carried away by them, and 
the most skilful are disconcerted; but the wisdom of the 
Master was never found wanting in any danger. 

If Jesus had set off at once with his disciples in order to 
escape the crowd, the agitation, instead of abating, would 
probably have spread and blazed out in Galilee; if he 
remained with his disciples in the midst of the crowd he 
exposed them to its contagious influence. Popular excitement 
is like a conflagration, it is impossible to resist its devouring 
flames. And the disciples, who were Galilaeans themselves, 
shared the fervent eagerness of the crowd. Everything that 

1 The term dp7ra£«v, to carry away by force , does not allow us to 
doubt the meaning which we have given to this passage. 


422 


JESUS CHRIST. 


gave glory to their Master was likely to flatter them. They 
were far from perceiving the design of God in the work of 
the Messiah, and if they believed in his triumph they could 
not imagine it unaccompanied by earthly power. If Jesus were 
proclaimed King by the people of Galilee, that would be the 
signal of the glorious advent of his Kingdom. 

Jesus saw the danger, and, with a decision which knew 
neither delay nor uncertainty, he first saved his disciples. 
After the miraculous meal they had again approached the 
shore; the Master told the disciples to enter into the ship and 
to go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida in Galilee, 
while he sent the people away. The disciples obeyed their 
Master’s order with reluctance, and he had to use all his 
authority to constrain them. 

The ship put out to sea, and Jesus dismissed the crowd. 
He could always control and charm it, but he never yielded 
to it. Of all those who were welcomed by it as deliverers 
during these troubled times, so ripe for rebellion, he was the 
only one who never submitted to its sway. 

He followed the will of his Father, and looked up to his 
Father to escape from men who hindered his work. At 
nightfall, while the multitude was dispersing, he went up 
into the mountain alone to pray. 

And the ship was in the midst of the lake when Jesus 
was on the mountain. The west wind blew tempestuously, 
the ship was tossed by the waves, and the disciples toiled in 
rowing. Those who are acquainted with the little sea of 
Tiberias know the fury of the winds, which suddenly agitate 
its waters ; the most intrepid rowers can hardly make head 
against them. 

Jesus did not forget his disciples. He saw them in the 
spirit, and his spirit was with them without their knowing it. 
Towards the fourth watch he came to them, walking on the 
waves of the sea. 



CHRIST WALKING ON THE SEA. 
From the Painting by B. Plockhorst. 







































* 













































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 423 

As our will, in the narrow sphere where it exerts its 
rule, triumphs at each moment over the law of gravity, 
and releases from it our body, which it moves, raises, and 
transports ; so the will of Jesus, in its sphere, which is 
boundless because God is fully in it, absolved his body on 
this occasion from the laws of space and gravity. It held 
him above the waves, and he appeared suddenly before 
the ship, in the sight of his disciples. This sudden appari¬ 
tion terrified them ; they thought it was a spirit, and cried 
out for fear. 

But immediately Jesus spoke to them : “ Be of good cheer, 
it is I ; be not afraid.” 

And Peter said : “ Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto 
thee on the water.” 

“ Come,” said Jesus. 

And at once Peter came down out of the ship and 
walked on the water to go to his Master. But the violence of 
the wind made him fear ; and as he was beginning to sink 
he cried, “Lord, save me.” Jesus, stretching forth his hand, 
caught him. 

“ O thou of little faith ! ” he said reproachfully ; “ wherefore 
didst thou doubt ? ” 

Then the disciples wished to take him in the ship, and, as 
he got in, the wind ceased of a sudden, and immediately the 
ship was at the land whither they went. 

The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves had left 
them hard of heart; they, like the crowd who were fed, were 
no doubt preoccupied with terrestrial thoughts and projects of 
earthly glory. Man, blinded by his own vanity, cannot see 
the work of God. But when danger presses and tears him 
from himself, forcing him to look above, then immediately 
his eye opens with his heart ; he understands and 
adores. 

The appearance of Jesus on the boisterous sea, and the 
sudden calm brought by his presence, filled the disciples with 


424 


JESUS CHRIST. 


amazement, and as soon as they had landed they fell at Jesus 
feet, saying, “ Of a truth thou art the Son of God.” 

Instead of the human glory of a king, which Jesus 
shunned and disdained and sacrificed to his Messianic 
calling, the heavenly Father gave him a divine sovereignty, 
and in order to wrest his disciples from the seductions of the 
one, he made them witnesses of the dazzling glory of the 
other; by such revelations he subdued and transformed 
them. 

On coming down from the mountain, after his long prayer, 
he let his power shine forth even in his mortal body. He 
controlled nature and its forces; he was not subject to the law 
of gravity; the submissive waves held him up, and he walked 
upon them. 

This ship, shaken by the tempest, which carries the 
disciples, and which will, in spite of contrary winds, pass 
from one shore to the other, represents the Church, his 
Kingdom, in the midst of the world. It struggles, in the 
dead of the night, against all the forces of the world let 
loose against it, to reach the eternal shore, where it has 
received its orders to land. Whilst it is resisting the storm, 
Jesus is praying alone on the mountain of God ; he comes 
to the aid of its weakness, he appears suddenly, radiant and 
tranquil, before the eyes of the rowers, and speaks to them 
of confidence and peace. He who has faith in him can, 
like him, walk upon the waves and conquer the rebellious 
elements, the darkness, the wind, and the sea. He who takes 
fright and loses confidence is overcome; but if he cries to the 
Master, it is enough, he is lifted up and saved. He enters 
the ship, and as soon as his foot touches it, at his presence 
alone, there is a calm and the ship is at land. He is the 
shore, for he is eternity. 

We will consider what was happening on the eastern 
shore of Bethsaida, which Jesus had just left, at the time 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 425 

when the disciples were worshipping the Son of God on the 
western shore, at the entrance of the plain of Gennesareth. 

The crowd, dismissed by him in the evening, returned the 
next morning. They hoped to find him again, for they had 
noticed that only one ship was on the shore, and that Jesus 
had not entered into it, and his disciples were gone without 
him. The plot, however, to proclaim him King had not 
vanished in the night; the ringleaders sought for Jesus, and, 
not finding him, they started for Capernaum, in boats vffiich 
had come from Tiberias, hoping by this means to overtake 
the Prophet sooner. 

The meeting, in fact, actually took place on the other side 
of the lake, just as Jesus was returning with his disciples from 
Bethsaida to Capernaum, and it obliged him to hasten the 
crisis which was pending. When a man of God, at war with 
the passions and prejudices of the crowd, sees the very 
independence and sanctity of his ministry threatened, the 
time for reticence is gone by ; he must tear away the veil and 
affirm the truth in its fulness; the false and hypocritical 
heart will wither away, but the upright and faithful soul will 
live, and truth will triumph. 

This explains the teaching of Jesus and the discourses 
which are now set forth, following the narrative of the fourth 
Evangelist. Their irresistible power is due to the grandeur of 
the assertions, the boldness of the precepts, the vigour of the 
symbols, and the intensity of the light they impart. Considered 
in reference to action, they represent, at this critical juncture, 
the greatest effort which Jesus made to disabuse the 
Galilaeans of their vain dreams of a political Messiah, and 
to initiate them into the truth of his spiritual and divine 
character. 

Those, who were seeking Jesus, said to him, as soon as 
they had found him, “Rabbi, when earnest thou hither ?” 1 

1 John vi. 25, etc. 


426 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Jesus did not even answer their curiosity; he went 
straight to the secret thoughts of his interrogators, he laid 
bare with one stroke all that was false, selfish, and, it 
might be, treacherous in the eager attention that was shown 
him. 

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because 
ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, 
and were filled.” 

These severe words were a condemnation, an absolute 
repudiation, of the idea of a mundane Messiah, which haunted 
the imagination of the Galilaeans, and of the trivial glory 
which they offered to Jesus. 

His miracles are symbols and signs which we must learn to 
interpret and understand. Apparently they only prove his 
power over matter and bodies, but really they indicate his 
power over soul and spirits. Those, whose bodily infirmities 
have been healed by him, ought to ask the salvation of their 
souls; those whom he feeds with terrestrial bread ought 
to think of the heavenly nourishment. He did not come to 
found a kingdom where, according to a dream of the Jews, he 
would prepare a feast for the material gratification of the people 
of God ; he came to inaugurate the Kingdom where the poor in 
spirit should be filled and should rejoice in the Spirit. The 
crowd, which had gathered together at Bethsaida, only saw 
the miracle, without understanding its signification. Having 
been fed by him, it demanded only material blessings from 
him ; he repulsed it, indignant and offended. 

But after this rough lesson he spoke in gentler terms. 

There are two kinds of meat, he cried, the one which 
perisheth, the other which endureth unto everlasting life. 
“ Labour not for that which perisheth, but for that which 
endureth for ever, for that which the Son of man shall give 
unto you : for him hath God the Father sealed.” 

The light bursts forth. 

Jesus reveals his Godhead, his mark and seal is the Spirit 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 427 

with which he is filled ; for this we must pray to him ; this is 
the meat which endureth for ever and by which the immortal 
soul must live. 

No religious teacher before Jesus had ever thus penetrated 
to the very depths of human nature, nor felt, as he did, its 
boundless aspirations, or grieved with more anguish over 
its poverty : he knew it to be heavily burdened, famished, 
empty; all his efforts had for their aim to draw it to himseif, 
who alone could restore its power, enlighten its ignorance, 
and satisfy its cravings. The tone with which he spoke, 
and of which we hear the echo in his words, touched the 
people. They could not resist this persuasive force, which 
roused the conscience and tore from its depths heartfelt 
and piercing cries. 

He besought them so urgently to seek the food of the 
Spirit, that the Jews, forgetting for a moment their pre¬ 
conceived hopes with regard to this world, cried out: “ What 
shall we do then to fulfil the work of God, and to have the 
life which does not perish ? ” 

“This is the work of God,” Jesus answered, “that ye 
believe on him whom he hath sent.” 

To believe : the whole religion of Jesus, the whole secret of 
eternal life lies in this simple word. To live by the earth, man 
must apply to it his energy and activity, for it is only fruit¬ 
ful on these conditions ; but to live by God, man has only to 
open himself to him and to receive him ; and this opening of 
the soul is faith. The supreme act of man in his relations 
with God is faith; faith implies forgetfulness of self, complete 
submission and full surrender to the word, will, and Spirit of 
God. And since Jesus said that he himself was sealed with 
the divine seal, we must therefore believe in him as in God. 

Such a doctrine was far removed from the traditional 
teaching of the Jewish rabbis. The whole code of laws, 
commanded by Moses and observed by the Jews as the very 
essence of justice and the condition of life, was superseded. 

34 


428 


JESUS CHRIST. 


We see the dawn of the whole religion of freedom taught 
in the Gospel, and of which St. Paul was afterwards the 
apostle. Jesus, who the night before refused earthly sove¬ 
reignty, now declares himself the one appointed messenger 
of God, and in the name of the Father he calls upon all 
people to believe in him. 

The people hesitate and resist. 

Absolute faith is the last thing which man will give. 
Even when he is profuse in his admiration, devotion, enthu¬ 
siasm, in his services and even his confidence, he jealously 
guards his ideas, his fancies, and his interests, and holds 
himself in reserve, ready to resume his old ways from the 
moment he feels his ideas shocked, his fancies crossed, or his 
interests threatened. 

No one, besides, has the right to demand of another 
absolute faith. By making this claim for himself Jesus raised 
himself above mankind, he placed himself higher than 
Moses, he made himself equal to God. 

The Jews said to him : “What sign shewest thou that we 
may see and believe thee ? Moses had a sign. Our fathers 
did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them 
bread from heaven to eat.” 

The multiplication of the loaves was not enough ; such a 
miracle did not raise Jesus to the height of Moses, and did not 
justify his claims in their eyes. For the feeding of a few 
thousand men was not to be compared with the power of him, 
who for forty years miraculously fed a whole people in the 
desert. The rabbis had taught that the first Redeemer, 
Moses, had made the manna fall and that the second 
Redeemer would renew the wonder. We find an indication 
of these dreams in the importunity of the Galilaean crowd . 1 

Jesus paid no attention to this demand. He had never in 
his whole career, in spite of his many miracles, given way in 


1 Midrasch Cohelei , fol. 86, 4. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 429 

anything to this thirst for the marvellous which consumed 
the people. All his mighty works had kindness alone for 
their motive, and faith for their condition. Whoever believes 
in him feels his goodness, and then it expands without limit; 
but whoever doubts and argues with him harshly, leaves him 
indifferent; he passes by, without imparting his Spirit, leaving 
the sceptic to his wretchedness and his obstinacy. Here, 
with a superhuman grandeur, he affirms that he himself is 
the sign of God. 

“ Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that 
bread from heaven.” However celestial the manna was in its 
origin, it was in its essence material, a perishable symbol of 
the eternal bread. “But my Father giveth you the true bread 
from heaven : for the bread of God is he which cometh down 
from heaven and giveth true life unto the world.” 

There were present in the assembly some souls who were 
touched and enlightened. “Lord,” they cried, “evermore 
give us this bread.” 

Then Jesus began to explain, without reserve, what he 
was: 

“ I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never 
hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” And 
alluding to the obstinate persistence with which they 
demanded signs, that they might come and believe in him, 
he intimated that he himself was the true sign. 

But 'he added, “Ye have seen me, but ye have not come 
unto me, neither have ye believed.” 

Jesus was indeed the great sign of God. 

Never in the whole course of religious history has the 
power, wisdom, goodness, and virtue of God been more fully 
manifested than in the life, the words, the holiness, the works 
of the Son of Man. If anyone reflects on these things and yet 
cannot recognise the messenger of the Father, it is impossible 
to enlighten or convince him. To ask again for miracles, such 


430 


JESUS CHRIST. 


as those of Moses when he made the manna rain upon the 
earth, of Joshua when he made the sun stand still, or of 
Elijah shutting the heavens by his prayer so that there was 
neither rain nor dew, is to prove our own incurable blindness. 
God turns away from such stubborn hearts; he loves to 
manifest himself to the poor and the humble, and remains 
inaccessible to those spirits which intrench themselves behind 
their material instincts, their arrogant science, and their 
egoism. 

This persistent incredulity afflicted and depressed Jesus. 
He felt, on this occasion, the whole weight of it. He had in 
the joy of his heart, and at a sign from his Father, given 
a feast to all these Galilaean people ; he had celebrated with 
them in the midst of the desert a miraculous Passover; yet 
the people understood nothing: instead of asking him for the 
bread of life, they asked for material bread ; instead of rising 
to higher things by the help of the symbol, they shut them¬ 
selves up in their narrow ideas and prejudices. 

A failure such as this was for Jesus a bitter foretaste of 
the fate which awaited him at Jerusalem itself, when he should 
go to manifest himself there for the last time in the presence 
of the representatives of the nation. 

But the thought of his Father consoled him for all the 
reverses which he suffered at the hands of men. The 
obstinacy of the unbelievers can never prevent the work of 
the Father ; it will be fulfilled by the elect; the reprobate will 
ruin only themselves, and make the righteousness of God 
shine forth more brightly. 

So it was with a calmness full of confidence, that Jesus 
said to them : 

“ All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him 
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came 
down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of 
him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will, that of all 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 431 

that he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise 
it up again at the last day.” 

Yes, he went on with emphasis, “Such is the Father’s will: 
every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, will have 
everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” 

To come to Jesus, to believe in his word, is a gift of God. 
The man who shuts himself up in his own reason, in his own 
errors, vices, instincts, and selfishness cannot receive it. He 
who, at the call of the Father, that is to say of good and truth 
and life, becomes aware of his own misery and nothingness, 
will come to him and believe ; Jesus will not repulse him, he 
will not be denied nor deceived, every hope will be realized, 
for Jesus has the will and the power to satisfy all men’s 
aspirations. He will find in him the eternal life which is the 
fulness of all his aspirations, the strength to preserve and 
develop it in this world, where everything is hostile to it, and 
where everything dies; and such is the power of the life, 
concentrated by the Father in the Son of Man, that it will 
conquer physical death itself; and at the last day the Son of 
Man will raise up all that the Father has given him. 

Jesus, in affirming these powers, claimed one of the most 
popular attributes of the Messiah, and he called to mind the 
hour of his final triumph when all the dead will hear his voice 
and their bodies will come to life. This is the true royalty 
which he claims, instead of the miserable empire in this 
world which the Galilaeans so ardently desired for him. Of this 
he cannot be disappointed, for it has the certainty of the divine 
promise. The failures which he will endure in this world will 
in no way dim its lustre; nay, they will the more increase it. 

All these declarations, given with increasing force and 
clearness, are the profession of faith of the followers of the 
true Messiah. Never since the first day of his public life, 
either in Judaea or in Galilee, either in discourses to the 
people or in private conversations so far as we know them, had 


432 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Jesus spoken in such expressive language. It is true that no 
occasion had more imperatively demanded it. The line 
adopted by the crowd, which had, owing to its prejudices 
taken a mistaken view of the Messianic character, rendered 
it necessary that he should free himself from all compromising 
association with it. This explains the tenour of such a dis¬ 
course, and its authenticity becomes irrefragable. 

In declaring to the Galilaeans the nature and the work 
of the Messiah, he reveals himself in the divinity of his being 
and of his works ; he makes manifest his divine birth, his 
ineffable relations to the Father, and his power equal to God ; 
thence he unveils the marvellous destiny of man; and the 
marvel is not that most of the Jews remained obstinate and 
unbelieving before such a presence and such deeds, but that 
the poor received his teaching, opened themselves to his Spirit, 
obeyed his influence, in spite of all those obstacles strong 
enough to impede any force but that of God. 

Truth revolts those who turn themselves from it and 
repulse it ; the words of Jesus called forth murmurs : 

He has dared to say, they whispered, “ I am the bread of 
life come down from heaven.” What does he mean ? is he not 
Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know his father and his 
mother ; how can he say, “ I am come down from heaven ? ” 

This was the great objection of the Jews, which prevented 
them from accepting Jesus as the Messiah ; we meet with it at 
every step ; the Nazarenes had already stated it ; it is 
renewed here, in direct opposition to the divine birth which 
Jesus claimed . 1 

1 Critics have thought to find in this a conclusive objection to the 
reality of his miraculous birth and conception. They forget two things, the 
obscurity and mystery which for thirty years had enveloped this divine 
fact, and the impropriety of recalling the subject before a hostile crowd, 
where it would only have met with incredulity and contempt. The 
miracle of the birth of Jesus is not a ground for belief to unbelievers 
it is one which confirms the faith in the soul of the believer, and which 
only those who believe have the power to accept. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 433 

Jesus did not stop to refute his adversaries. It was no 
difficulty which hindered their belief, it was their inward 
disposition, which Jesus thus exposed : 

“ Murmur not; ” that is, do not discuss the matter. 

“ No man can come to me except the Father draw him ; ” 
he will not see the sign ; he will not understand ; he will not 
believe. But, I say again, that that which the Father hath 
sent me I shall raise up again at the last day ; I shall lead 
it to absolute perfection. 

The objections taken against Jesus proceed always from 
blindness of sense, narrowness of reason, and resistance of the 
will. But those whom the Father draws to him, the Father, 
the secret, infinite source of truth, good, and life, are pre¬ 
served from these obstacles ; they give up that particularism 
which locks us up in ourselves, and in which our sensuality and 
our inconstant wills imprison us. They follow the secret and 
profound impulse which urges them on towards absolute 
virtue, perfect good, and eternal life, and the Father leads 
them to Jesus, who was chosen to give them truth, goodness, 
and life. It is thus that he brings them to perfection, and 
such is the fulness of life, which Jesus pours into them, that 
the body itself will feel the rebound. Vanquished for a moment 
by death, it will conquer death, on the last day, at the voice 
of him who will raise it up again. 

The Jews, obstinately persistent in their particularism, in 
their observance of the Law, in their false religion and in 
their views of an earthly Messiah, resisted the attraction of 
the Father. They were not disciples, but slaves of their own 
Law, and that was the reason they could not believe in Jesus. 
In showing them this reason he lays bare the mystery of the 
incredulity of all the centuries to come. The same constant 
causes in mankind produce the same results. 

The Master only teaches here the doctrine of the Prophets. 
It is written, indeed, that all the members of the body of 
Christ’s followers will be taught of God. 


434 


JESUS CHRIST. 


“Yes,” said Jesus, laying stress upon this fundamental 
fact of the divine life in man, “every man that hath heard 
the Father, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me, 
Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of 
God; he alone hath seen the Father.” 

To feel the attraction of the source of all being, all truth, 
all virtue, and all life is not the same as to see him. It is, on 
the contrary, a proof that we are far from him, but that since 
he leads us on we may attain to him. 

Jesus alone never felt this thirst, for he is at the very 
source ; and he alone can lead thither those souls which it 
consumes. He it is who came from God, and he descended 
from God that he might ascend again to him, taking with him 
all those who come to him. Returning then to the idea 
which had shocked the Jews and provoked their murmurs, he 
asserted himself again with even greater solemnity 

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on 
me hath everlasting life, for I am the bread of life. Your 
fathers did eat manna, and are dead. This is the bread 
which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, 
and not die. I am the living bread which came down 
from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for 
ever.” 

In calling himself the living bread, Jesus, by using this 
very forcible expression, declared with extreme clearness that 
he was not merely the bread which gives life, but he was him¬ 
self the life of God, realised in human nature. 

He proceeded to multiply these divine paradoxes, and to 
increase to the point of frenzy the already outraged feelings 
of these worldly-minded Jews, by showing them what part 
would be played by this Manhood, at which they took offence, 
and by which he was to save the world. 

“ The bread that I will give you is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world.” 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 435 

The idea of the Master, in this discourse, develops 
and grows with the growth of the opposition it calls forth. 
At each murmur it bursts forth and shows itself more 
profound. 

As he had a few months before, when instructing 
Nicodemus, compared the Son of Man to the serpent raised 
by Moses before the people, so he seems on the present 
occasion to recall the Feast of the Passover. He gives them 
to understand that he will be the Lamb of Sacrifice, the 
true victim, the new Passover, which must be eaten not by 
one people, but by the whole of mankind. 

At the words, “ The bread is my flesh,” a violent argument 
arose among the Jews. They exclaimed, “ How can this man 
give us his flesh to eat ? ” 

Their antagonism had reached its height. But Jesus would 
not in any way palliate his words to calm their spirits. He 
decided to have done with this crowd, which would not enter 
into his Kingdom, and which became an obstacle to its 
realisation; he strengthened his assertions and increased 
the storm. 

“ Verily, verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of 
the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal 
life ; and I will raise him up at the last day; for my flesh is 
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” 

This is the part taken by the manhood of Jesus in the 
salvation of the world, in the Messianic Kingdom; it is 
one of the most profound mysteries of the doctrine of the 
Master. It is not only his divine Spirit which has power, but 
his soul and his mortal body, his flesh and his blood ; in a 
word, his whole being. It is not enough to communicate 
with his Spirit, we must communicate with his soul, his body, 
his flesh, his blood, his person, his whole being. The 
Eucharist is clearly foreshadowed in these words, full of 
defiance of Jewish wisdom and all human reason. 


4 36 


JESUS CHRIST 


Jesus is not content merely to die, to surrender his body 
as a victim, he wishes us to eat of it and to drink his blood. 

His infinite wisdom will be able to realize this, and to 
grant man this perfect incorporation. The believer who shall 
eat his flesh and drink his blood, will find in them eternal 
life ; for he will find in them the Spirit of Jesus, inseparable 
from the one and from the other ; and it is by this Spirit that 
the one will be meat and the other will be drink. “ He will 
dwell in me,” said Jesus, " and I in him.” The union will be 
perfect, and this union with the living Jesus will give life to 
dead mankind. “ As the living Father hath sent me, and I 
live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live 
by me.” 

No words in human language fill us with more amaze¬ 
ment by their profundity. There are two lives ; the one 
material, the other divine; one in nature, the other in 
God. The former is only possible for man by terrestrial 
and material food which nourishes him ; the latter is only 
accessible by the humanity of Jesus. The man who refuses 
to assimilate the former by food dies ; and in the same 
way the man who refuses to assimilate the latter by the 
body and blood of Christ dies. He is the meat and the 
drink. 

Jesus, to conclude this scene, one of the most remarkable 
of his life, asserted again what he was in these words, which 
manifest him fully: 

“ This is that bread which came down from heaven.” It 
is offered to you, you are more privileged than your fathers. 

“ They did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this 
bread shall live for ever.” 

This was his supreme appeal to this people ; to reject 
him is to die ; to accept him is to live. The nation rejected 
him, and it died. These words were spoken at a solemn 
assembly in the middle of the synagogue, at Capernaum 
itself. 






NORTHERN END OF THE DEAD 































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 437 


The false conception of the Messiah was thus dissipated 
at its very crisis. 

As Jesus rejected, at the time of his temptation in the 
wilderness, the offers of Satan to give him the kingdom of 
the world if he would submit himself to him, so at the time 
cf his greatest influence over the people of Galilee, he 
rejected all terrestrial royalty and all compromise with 
popular passions. 

The idea of the Messiah, for more than a century and a 
half, from the last days of Herod to the reign of Hadrian, 
had never ceased to tempt the ambitious. Judas the 
Gaulonite, Theudas the Egyptian, Bar-cochab, all these false 
heroes submitted to or worked upon the passions of the 
crowd, and provoked by its means sanguinary revolutions ; 
they all found men learned in the law to encourage their 
mad dreams, and to sanction their plans and their mission 
of violence by the authority of the Law and the Prophets. 
The Pharisees were willing to be the sheepskin which covered 
these devouring wolves. Jesus alone remained free from 
such miserable ambitions, he alone realised the type of the 
spiritual Messiah. 

The discourses which he delivered to the people during 
many days, and which have been summed up in such 
powerful terms by the fourth Evangelist, roused a veritable 
tempest. He took the fan in his hand, and separated by 
the passionate breath of truth the worthless straw and the 
good grain. The greater part was rejected, a chosen portion 
preserved. All those who could not renounce the wisdom to 
which they laid claim, their national ambitions, their cere¬ 
monious religion, their worldly hopes, gradually withdrew 
from him, puzzled, frustrated, shocked, and offended. The 
excitement produced by the Master’s words, the storm 
which they let loose, was of such violence that some of the 


438 JESUS CHRIST. 

disciples themselves who had lived with Jesus were over¬ 
thrown by it. 

“ This is an hard saying,” they cried ; “ who can hear it ? ” 
Jesus was watching his disciples, and he heard their murmur, 
and said to them, “ Doth this offend you ? What and if ye 
shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before : 
will ye then believe ? ” 

This was an allusion to his future triumph, of which the 
ascension into heaven would be the striking proof, for it 
would prove that though man had momentary power over 
the humanity of Jesus, he had none over his Spirit, the 
incoercible and sovereign force. 

“ It is the Spirit that quickeneth,” he said ; “ the flesh 
profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they 
are Spirit, and they are life.” They realise and perform what 
they assert. 

All the quickening power of Jesus depended on the Spirit 
with which his terrestrial humanity overflowed; and if his 
flesh and blood can nourish the man who incorporates them 
with himself by faith, it is because of the divine Spirit in 
them. 

But to participate in this Spirit, faith is necessary. “ But,” 
Jesus added, “there are some of you that believe not.” 

No doubt the Master clearly discerned the inward 
thoughts of those who came to him, and if he allowed evil- 
disposed natures to attach themselves to him, it was evi¬ 
dently to give them a better opportunity for amendment. 
By thus mentioning them, without giving their names, he 
invited them to repentance and faith. Then, reverting as 
usual to the thought of his Father, whose will fills his and 
leads all things, he repeated these words, which he loved : 
“ Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me. 
except it were given him of my Father.” 

From this time many of his disciples, influenced by the 
movement which alienated the mass of the people from Jesus, 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 439 

went back and walked no more with him. This desertion 
must have grieved him, it was a kind of treason. However, 
one thought consoled him ; he saw in this rupture the puri¬ 
fication necessary for his work; and he would gladly have 
had it extended to the Twelve, for he knew by divine insight 
that there was an evil element among them also. He turned 
towards them and said, “ Will ye also go away? ” 

Peter, with characteristic ardour and enthusiasm, replied 
for all : “ Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art 
the Holy One of God.” 

By thus speaking, the expansive soul of Peter merely put 
into words what he and the other apostles had already ex¬ 
perienced by their intercourse with Jesus. 

The Master, though touched by this cry, did not accept 
it without reserve. He knew that one of the Twelve was a 
traitor, and he told them so plainly in words which showed, 
at the same time, his love for those whom he had chosen, and 
the ingratitude of one of them : “ Have not I chosen you ? 
and one of you is a devil! ” 

Judas did not recognize himself in this severe allusion 
of Jesus. The hypocrite accepted as his own Peter’s generous 
profession of faith, and he remained among the Twelve. 

It is the will of the Father that in this world the tares 
shall always be mixed with the good grain. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE JOURNEY OF JESUS TO THE COASTS OF TYRE AND 
SIDON AND THROUGH DECAPOLIS 

The position of Jesus in Galilee became more defined after 
this crisis, of which we have just related the leading events. 
The people, as a whole, blinded by their religious and 
political prejudices, refused to enter into his Kingdom, which 
repelled them by its too spiritual nature. Many of the dis¬ 
ciples of Jesus were offended and left him, and the Scribes and 
Pharisees continued to watch him secretly, and to beset and 
discredit him in public opinion. The tetrarch both observed 
and threatened him. There was much to fear from the man 
who had beheaded John, and who, in his troubled conscience, 
imagined that Jesus was John come to life again. Only the 
Twelve, and a certain number of disciples, remained with the 
Master. 

Humanly speaking, the cause was lost. 

Neither the eloquence, nor the wisdom, nor the miracles, 
nor the goodness of Jesus, nor the continual manifestations 
of the Spirit which abounded in him, could overcome the 
obstinate self-will of this hardened nation. They admired 
and applauded his teaching, they were insatiably eager for 
miracles; but they remained impenitent and unbelieving. 
When the time was come to decide between the Gospel and 
their old prejudices, between the new law of the Messiah, and 
their national traditions, they resisted and turned away, and 
remained the slaves of their own prejudices and traditions. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 441 

Instead of following Jesus they wished to be followed by 
him. 

Three towns of Galilee, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Caper¬ 
naum, had been the object of the Prophet’s most zealous 
care. They at least should have set an example to the others, 
and have roused them by the impressiveness of their con¬ 
version. But they did not change; they continued to live 
in the old routine of religious observance and of godless 
practice. 

Such hardness of heart drew from Jesus a cry of sorrow 
and indignation ; they seemed to him worse than the heathen 
towns, worse even than the towns, like Sodom, which were 
doomed to destruction. 

“ Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! 
for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been 
done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long 
ago in sackcloth and ashes. 

“ But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre 
and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. 

“And thou, Capernaum,” the home of him whom the 
prophets spoke of, and whom the nations looked for, “ thou 
which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: 
for if the mighty works which have been done in thee, had 
been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 
But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee .” 1 

The judgments of God are not always deferred until 
eternity. The three towns, which bore the weight of these 
denunciations, have been utterly destroyed for many cen¬ 
turies. The glory of Jesus has risen upon their ruins, and his 
Spirit of life, which has created new nations and a new world, 
has left them to desolation and oblivion. 

The Master confided to the Twelve his sorrow and indigna- 


1 Matt. xi. 20, etc. 


442 


JESUS CHRIST. 


tion. But no despondent or bitter words ever escaped him, 
even in those moments of anguish when, feeling all the 
bitterness of ingratitude and faithlessness, he drank in deep 
draughts of the cup of suffering. 

He had none of the littlenesses which often accompany 
genius. He did not yield to the crowd, but neither did he 
become embittered against it; he was never perturbed by 
man’s distrust, for he knew himself to be stronger than evil ; 
he sought refuge from men in the will of his Father, which 
governs all things, and thus the sufferings of his lot seemed 
easy to him. Even at this time, responding to the Spirit with 
which he was ever in communion, and which merged his 
human will in perfect union with that of the Father, he was 
filled with a great joy : 

“ O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I thank thee be¬ 
cause thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
and hast revealed them unto babes : even so, Father; for so it 
seemed good in thy sight.” 1 

This is a fundamental and universal law of salvation. It 
was true for Galilee and Judaea as it is for the whole earth ; 
for the time when Jesus spoke to his own people, and for the 
times when from century to century his apostles repeat his 
teaching to the world. 

Human learning and wisdom have not the power to pene¬ 
trate the will of God ; and those who arrogantly put their 
trust in these, will discern nothing but offence and foolishness 
in the purposes of God. The divine light alone can enable us 
to see, but it is only given to the humble and meek, to those 
who disregard their own wisdom and learning and who accept 
with unquestioning faith, from the lips of Jesus, the impene¬ 
trable mysteries of the Kingdom of God. 

Throughout all man’s defection or opposition, Jesus main¬ 
tained, unshaken, the consciousness of his omnipotence; to 


1 Matt. xi. 25, etc.; cf. Luke xi. 25, etc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 443 


his disciples he declared himself equal to the Father, the one 
Master, the one revealer. “ All things are delivered unto me 
of my Father.” 

The infinite source of all being, strength, truth, beauty, 
love, and life, has given all into my hands. “ All that is in 
him is in me ; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; 
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he 
to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” 1 

Seldom had the consciousness of his Godhead inspired 
Jesus with clearer or more forcible words; never had his 
ardent zeal, his love for man, wrung from him a more moving 
cry. His insight into their trouble, their anxiety, their agita¬ 
tion, their anguish, moved his compassion ; he thought of all 
those who are unhappy when he uttered these words which 
appeal to all mankind : 

“ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn 
of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden 
is light .” 2 

The yoke of Jesus is the Spirit of God himself; it does 
not burden those who accept it, it bears them up. And the 
burden is, that they who take the yoke upon them must 
renounce themselves, their instincts, passions, interests, their 
own life itself. But in the sacrifice of self-surrender, man 
renounces but his own worthlessness ; full soon he knows the 
peace, the strength, the joy of God ; he leaves the storms of 
time to enter into God’s eternal calm. 

All unprepared as they were for the gifts of the Spirit, 
Jesus gave freely to the people of material benefits. Even 
at this time, when the crowd were so hostile to his influence, 


1 Matt. xi. 27. 
a Matt. xi. 28. 

35 


444 


JESUS CHRIST. 


he continued to heal the sick and infirm, to have pity 
on the stubborn-hearted, to weep for them, and to meet 
their faithlessness and hardness of heart by an increase of 
compassion. 

His good deeds, on the plains of Gennesareth, in the 
neighbourhood of Bethsaida, were countless. The hamlets, 
villages, and towns, which he passed through, were thronged 
with sick people, who were carried, lying on their beds, into 
his presence. They filled the public places and besought him 
that they might touch if it were but the hem of his garment, 
and as many as touched him with faith were made w'hole. 1 

As he went on his way he was surrounded by all those 
who were in distress; thus did he interpret his royal mission. 
This manifestation of goodness was the crowning-point of his 
apostolic work in Galilee. 

From the time of the great crisis, which ended a few 
days after the Passover of the year 29, until the month of 
September, when he set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem, 
Jesus only made short visits to Galilee and Capernaum. The 
sacred writings no longer represent him drawing the crowd 
to him and explaining the mysteries of his Kingdom by 
parables, as in the first months. He went away in silence to 
the borders of the Galilaean territory, to the neighbourhood of 
the lands of Tyre and Sidon ; he visited Decapolis, touched 
at Magdala, and set out for the tetrarchy of Herod Philip, 
passing by Bethsaida-Julias. It was not until after these 
various journeys that he passed through Galilee, and re¬ 
entered Capernaum, for a hasty visit, on the eve of quitting 
it for ever. 2 

1 Matt. xiv. 34, etc.; Mark vi. 54, etc. 

2 These excursions to parts far distant from the centre of the Galilaean 
agitation are omitted by St. Luke ; they are clearly given by St. Matthew, 
and more especially by St. Mark, by whom alone certain features and inci¬ 
dents in the life of the Master have been preserved. We find Jesus again 
the same as ever, inexorable to the Pharisees, and full of gentleness 
towards the people. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 445 

The position of Jesus made this retreat necessary. He 
had reason to distrust Herod and his courtiers; the Pharisees, 
more exasperated than ever, were ever ready to entrap and 
threaten, and it was advisable that he should not expose 
himself prematurely to their hatred. The people, always 
possessed by dreams of martial glory, might renew their plot 
to carry Jesus away by force, and make him King in spite 
of himself. It was wise to escape from the blind adoration 
of such a multitude. Besides, the final scenes in the destiny of 
the Messiah were not to be in Galilee, but in Judaea and at 
Jerusalem. Jesus gathered his disciples about him to put 
the crown upon his teaching, to lead them gradually to a 
knowledge of his work, and to prepare himself for the final 
struggle. 

Immediately upon leaving Capernaum to go to the neigh¬ 
bouring countries of Tyre and Sidon, Jesus met the Scribes 
and Pharisees, who were returning from Jerusalem, where they 
had kept th'e Passover. 1 These noticed that some of his 
disciples at their meals broke the bread without having first 
purified their hands by the usual ablutions. Here was at 
once a cause of contention. The rigour with which these 
bigoted formalists insisted on the most minute observances 
which, according to their traditions, constituted the code of 
perfect righteousness and piety, is well known. Ablution was 
the great purifying rite ; to give it the sanction of age, it was 
attributed to the era of Solomon, but in reality it dated from 
Hillel and Schammai. It had rapidly gained credit and had 
acquired great popularity in the time of Jesus. Those who 
despised it fell under the ban of the excommunication of 
the Sanhedrin. 2 


1 Matt. xv. ; Mark vii. 

2 Babyl.i Beracoth , fol. 46. 


446 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The custom was applied to persons and even to things, 
such as chalices, cups, vases, beds, and to everything used 
in domestic life. The strict observers of these ceremonies 
marked the distinction between washing, sprinkling, and 
dipping, between the first water and the second ; they made 
it obligatory to take four thousand steps to procure the neces¬ 
sary water, and one of the holiest of the rabbis taught that 
it was better to die of thirst than to transgress the tradition of 
the Elders on this point. 1 

These details, which vividly depict the absurdities 
of the observances of the Pharisees, and show to what 
childishness even minds otherwise enlightened may descend, 
help also to make us realise the divine courage of Jesus : 
he never yielded to such customs of man’s devising, 
which in no way promote religion, but rather hinder and 
pervert it. The disciples naturally followed the example 
of the Master, and neglected the prescribed ablution 
before meat. The Pharisees were scandalised at their 
conduct. 

Why, said they to Jesus, in an offended tone, do not your 
disciples observe the traditions of the Elders ? Why do they 
eat bread with unwashed hands ? 

“Ye hypocrites,” replied Jesus, “ well did Esaias 2 prophesy 
of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their 
mouth, but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do 
worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of 
men. 

“ For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the 
tradition of men. For Moses commanded, saying, Honour thy 
father and thy mother. He that curseth father or mother, let 
him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his 
father or his mother, Whatsoever thou mightest be profited 


1 Erubbin , fol. 21. 
a Is. xxix. 13. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 447 

by me, it is dedicated by me to God, he shall be free. 1 And 
you do not require that he do aught for his father and his 
mother. In this and in many other ways ye have made the 
commandment of God of none effect through your tradition 
which ye have yourselves delivered.” 

The most common snare of empty religion and hypo¬ 
critical piety is the abuse of ritual. This is the Pharisaic 
spirit against which Jesus never ceased to struggle. Under 
the mask of outward ceremonial man seeks to hide his 
vices, and so far were these mistaken devotees led astray by 
pride, that they sacrificed the holy law of God to the paltry 
observances born of their own religious fancies. The Pharisee 
consecrated all he had to spare to the Temple for the purchase 
of animals for sacrifice, for salt and wood; and he let his 
own father and mother die of hunger. 

This severe reproof of Jesus met with no reply. He 
immediately called the crowd, to teach them and to expose 
the hypocrisy of their unworthy masters. 2 3 

“ Hearken unto me, every one of you, and understand : 
there is nothing from without a man, that entering into him 
can defile him ; but the things which come out of him, those 
are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, 
let him hear.” 

The disciples then drew near to Jesus, and said : “Knowest 
thou, Master, that the Pharisees were offended when they 
heard this saying ? ” 

1 Corban : an abbreviated formula used by the Jews to confirm their 

vows. A distinction was made between the vows by which anything was 
dedicated to God, and those vows which prohibited or enforced the per¬ 
formance of a certain act. If the word Corban were pronounced over 
any object, that object became irrevocably dedicated. The Pharisaic 
devotee dedicated to God, to the service of the altar, and to the Temple, 
his goods or the superfluity of his goods ; his master forbade him to use 
them to provide for the wants of his father and mother. Cf. Lightfoot, 
Horae Hebraicae et Talmud , ad. h. 1 . 

3 Matt. xv. 10, etc. ; Mark vii. 14, etc. 


448 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Jesus no longer attempted to spare his adversaries : his 
words were impassioned, and unswerving in their direct¬ 
ness. 

“ Every plant,” he replied, “ which my heavenly Father 
hath not planted, shall be rooted up : let them alone, they be 
blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, 
both shall fall into the ditch.” 

Every religion founded on error is destined to perish ; 
it has no root in God, and it will disappear like the man who 
has planted and founded it. Such is the fate of all the false 
systems, which have professed to guide mankind, but which 
have only succeeded in precipitating it into the ditch, where 
they and their victims lie buried for ever. 

Jesus, leaving the crowd, went again into the house with 
his disciples. The parable of the true purity seems to have 
troubled their spirit, overthrowing, as it did, the whole 
teaching of the Pharisees, and setting at nought the 
righteousness of the Law, with its elaborate and useless 
ritual. Peter spoke for them, and said to the Master : 

“ Declare unto us this parable.” 

“And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? 
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever thing from 
without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him, because 
it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, purging all 
meats ? But that which cometh out of the man, that defileth 
the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed 
evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetous¬ 
ness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye or envious 
thought, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things 
come from within, and defile the man.” 

The prophets had often, and in forcible terms, preached 
these sound and simple precepts ; but for many centuries the 
Jews ignored them more and more, and at the time of Jesus 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 449 

they were universally abandoned by the rabbis and the 
schools. 

These formalists had substituted the outward, material 
rite for righteousness; and inward truth and uprightness 
were of small account. Not a single voice was raised among 
priests, doctors, or scribes to protest against this abuse; the 
teachers were blind, and the crowd, passive and thoughtless, 
followed in their footsteps. To these men, whose minds 
were perverted from the truth, Jesus at length spoke in 
words of irresistible force, which surpassed even those of his 
Forerunner. Before the face of the Pharisees he proclaimed 
the vanity of their practices and the hypocrisy of their 
formalism. He distinguished between the body and the 
soul ; the body that is of no account, and the soul that is all 
in all; for the purity of the heart and the soul is alone 
esteemed in God’s sight, who cares nothing for our bodily 
imperfections. Thus did Jesus, once and for all, break the 
yoke of those elaborate observances by which the Gentile 
religions, and the teaching of the Pharisees among the Jews, 
had oppressed mankind, and, having lightened man’s conscience 
of the burden, he established a worship of spirit and of truth. 

After this encounter, which showed once again the 
blindness and obstinacy of his adversaries, and their readi¬ 
ness to be offended without cause, Jesus arose and departed 
with his disciples to the borders of Phoenicia. 1 We do not 
know by what roads he travelled, nor at what towns or 
villages he broke the journey. One circumstance, mentioned 
by St. Mark, 2 shows that in the last months of the Galilaean 
apostolate, the Master intended to avoid the tumult of the 
crowd, and to allay its quickly-roused excitement. 

On entering a certain house, where he was to be a guest, he 
commanded that his arrival should not be made known ; but 

1 Matt. xv. 21, etc. ; Mark vii. 24, etc. 
a Mark vii. 24. 


450 JESUS CHRIST. 

he could not be hid, for the Gentiles round about soon heard 
that he was there. 

A woman of Canaan, a Syro-phoenician, having heard of 
him, and being drawn to him through sorrow and trouble, 
came to his dwelling and besought him, and cried unto 
him : 

“ Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my 
daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” 

Jesus did not answer her. 

And his disciples besought him and said : 

“ Send her away, for she crieth after us.” 

Jesus replied : “ I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel.” 

The woman entered, and throwing herself at his feet cried, 
“ Lord, help me ! ” 

Jesus withheld his compassion. It seemed as if, by a show 
of hardness, he wished to put the faith of this unhappy woman 
to the test, and to call forth an expression of her trust in 
him. 

He said to her, “ Let the children be filled ; it is not meet 
to take the children’s bread and to cast it unto the dogs.” 

The woman received this harsh allusion to her heathen state 
without a murmur, and said : 

“ Truth, Lord ; yet the dogs under the table eat of the 
children’s crumbs.” 

Jesus was overcome by so much humility and gentleness: 

“ O woman,” he said, “ great is thy faith. For this saying, 
go thy way, the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” 

The woman returned to her house, where her daughter 
lay upon the bed. The devil had gone out of her at the very 
hour that Jesus had spoken. 

This simple story makes manifest the universality of the 
work of the Messiah. By God’s will, and by the action of 
Jesus, Israel, the chosen people, was the first to receive the 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 451 

good news, and to enjoy the light and the benefits of the 
Kingdom. But the Gentiles, represented by the woman of 
Canaan, are to follow in their turn, and the name of Jesus will 
be borne into their hearing; they too are to learn that he 
comes to heal and to save. Then no more will they be like 
the dogs, gathering up the crumbs which fall from the table 
where the children of the Father are filled ; for they too will 
become his children by faith ; by faith also there will be 
equality among Jews and Gentiles throughout the world, and 
even those of a despised race will, if they but believe, become 
members incorporate of the chosen people of God. 

We cannot tell from the Gospels the exact length of time 
occupied by this journey of Jesus to the borders of Phoenicia. 
The touching incident of the woman of Canaan sheds a solitary 
ray upon this obscure period of his life. Even tradition, which 
often supplements the Gospel narratives, is dumb ; for the 
villages where some memory of his passing might have lingered 
are the homes of Mussulmans. Nothing is known of his various 
halts or discourses, or good works. But near Jebel es Sheikh, 
a spring is shown where Jesus is said to have quenched his 
thirst; it marks the extreme limit of his journey through the 
north of Galilee. 

On departing from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, he came 
again to the borders of the Lake of Gennesareth, passing 
through Decapolis. 1 Here it will be impossible to trace the 
route, unless we can fix the position of this region. Deca¬ 
polis, as its Greek name implies, was certainly a confederation 
of ten principal towns ; but we do not know the names, nor 
the exact situation of several of them. The Evangelists, 
who often mention Decapolis, assume that it is well known, 
and give no precise details. 

Pliny, in his History, and Josephus, in his Biography, are 
1 Matt. xv. 29; Mark vii. 31. 


452 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the most ancient writers who give any information on the 
subject. From the former historian, there appears no doubt 
that several towns of the confederation were in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Syria, and from both it is certain that the greater 
number of them, as Gadara, Hippos, and Pella, were to the 
east of the lake ; one, Scythopolis, lying on this side Jordan, 
was shut in between the lower part of Galilee and Samaria, 
on the border of the two countries. 

It follows from these plain facts that if Jesus, departing 
from the country of Tyre and Sidon, returned to the Lake of 
Tiberias by way of Decapolis, he must have directed his 
steps to the east, crossed the Leontes, gone down to the valley 
of the Jordan, passed over the river, perhaps by the bridge 
of the Daughters of Jacob, and followed the eastern shore of 
the lake through Gadara and Hippos, as far as the territory of 
Scythopolis. 

The inhabitants of these towns were mostly Syro-Greeks 
or Phoenicians ; the Jewish element was sparse. However, 
according to the teaching of the rabbis, Decapolis, though. 
inhabited by Gentiles, was part of the land of Israel, and a 
Jew in settling there, in the midst of unbelievers, still felt him¬ 
self at home, and shared the religious privileges which attached 
to the sacred soil. He who inhabits the land, say the doctors, 
has God in him; he who is buried in it, is absolved from his 
sins; it is as though he reposed beneath the altar. 1 

We do not know which road Jesus followed, nor which 
town in Decapolis he visited. In spite of the care which he 
took to avoid the crowd, the people hastened to him in 
increasing numbers, attracted by his wonder-working power. 
Curiosity, the desire to be healed of physical ills, the thirst 
for the miraculous; these things will always stir the people. 
There were led to him the halt, the blind, and the dumb, and 
those who were sick of divers diseases. They fell at his 


Babyl. Che tub., fol. no, in. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 453 

feet and he healed them, so that the Gentiles marvelled and 
glorified the God of Israel. 1 

St. Mark gives a full account of one of these wonders, the 
healing of the deaf and dumb man. They besought Jesus to 
put his hands upon him ; 2 he took him aside, far away from 
the multitude, put his fingers into his ears, and with his spittle 
he touched his tongue ; then looking up to heaven he sighed 
and said, “ Ephphatha,” that is “ Be opened.” And straight¬ 
way his ears were opened and his tongue was unloosed, and 
he spoke plainly. Jesus charged them that they should tell 
no man, but it was impossible to check the enthusiasm of a 
multitude, which is always carried away by feeling. 

The more Jesus demanded silence, the more they pub¬ 
lished it abroad. The people cried aloud, in their admira¬ 
tion, “ He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf 
to hear, and the dumb to speak.” It is thus that the voice of 
the people is the voice of God. Left to themselves, with their 
innate sense of right and the spontaneity of their impressions, 
they rejoice at the sight of truth, justice and goodness, and for 
this reason Jesus loved them. The eager enthusiasm of the 
crowd consoled him for the hostile and arrogant attitude 
adopted by the Pharisees. 

Some days after, as he continued his journey, he found 
himself again surrounded by the multitude, over which he 
exercised an irresistible attraction. It gathered together in 
his footsteps and followed him, as sheep follow the shepherd, 
without care for the morrow, delighted and enthralled. It 
had continued with him three days, and there was no food. 3 
Jesus ascended a hill and sat down, and then he called his 
disciples to him, and said : 

1 Matt. xv. 35. 

3 Mark vii. 32-37. 

3 Matt. xv. 32, etc.; Mark viii. 1-9. 


454 


JESUS CHRIST. 


“ I have compassion on the multitude ; they have now 
been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; if I send 
them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the 
way, for divers of them came from far.” 

The disciples were astonished, and reminded him of the 
impossibility of feeding a whole people in the desert. Jesus 
said, “ How many loaves have you ? ” Seven, and a few 
little fishes. He commanded the multitude to sit down on 
the ground ; then he took the seven loaves and the fishes 
and gave thanks to God, and brake them and gave to his 
disciples, who distributed them to the people. They all 
did eat and were satisfied ; and of the broken meat that 
was left, they took up seven baskets full. And they that 
did eat were about four thousand, beside women and chil¬ 
dren. 1 

Jesus hastened to send away the multitude and to escape 
quickly himself. The lake was near; he entered into a ship 
with his disciples, and landed in the country of Dalmanutha, 
on the coasts of Magdala. 2 

What was the length of his sojourn in Decapolis, and what 
the manner of his life in the midst of these half-heathen 
populations, we do not know. The healing of the deaf and 
dumb man, and the multiplication of the loaves, are the only 
acts which the Evangelists have preserved. Jesus only passed 
through this territory, he did not settle in any place ; but 
wherever he went, in spite of his efforts to avoid exciting the 
curiosity and enthusiasm of the people, he was always 
surrounded by the crowd, and his journey was a trium¬ 
phal procession. His arrival in the country of Magdala, 
not far from Bethsaida and Capernaum, was soon made 
known. 

The absence of Jesus, from the time when he asserted with 

1 See Appendix H : The Two Miracles of the Loaves and Fishes . 
a See Appendix I: The Coiuitry of Dalmanutha. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 455 

such clearness and decision, in the synagogue at Capernaum, 
the spiritual nature of his Messiahship, had in no way ap¬ 
peased the anger and hatred of his enemies. 

Though the people left him, he was constantly watched 
by the chiefs of the various schools and the leaders of the 
different parties, the Pharisees and Sadducees ; who sought to 
confute him and surprise him, and to draw from him words 
which would enable them to denounce and ruin him. They 
knew, no doubt, of the last miracles of Jesus in the towns of 
Decapolis; and no doubt they endeavoured to depreciate 
them, by attributing them to the Evil Spirit, according to their 
usual method of attack. 

Many of them combined 1 and came to Jesus, and, hiding 
their evil designs under the mask of apparent sincerity, 
desired him to show them a sign from heaven, no doubt 
promising to believe in him if he complied with their 
request. 

Thy miracles, they seem to say, are miracles of the earth 
where Satan reigns; what we demand is, miracles in the 
heaven where God dwells ; these may be the work of Satan ; 
show us those which can only come from God ; do as Elias, 
Samuel, Joshua, and Moses did ; give us a sign from heaven, 
and we will believe in thee. 

This sophistry was a favourite argument of the Pharisees, 
who hoped, by this strange doctrine, to weaken the value of the 
miraculous testimonies of Jesus, and to lull their own con¬ 
science, which was constantly aroused by the words and marvels 
of him who called himself the Messenger of God. We are 
reminded of the former occasion on which Jesus, with such 
severity and precision, and such indignant eloquence, refuted 
these errors and exposed this hypocrisy. 

When he saw these same Pharisees adding deceit to 
hatred, and renewing their attacks with still greater obstinacy, 


1 Matt, xvi., etc.; Mark xiii. 2, etc. 


456 


JESUS CHRIST. 




than before, he could not refrain from uttering a cry of grief; 
he sighed deeply in spirit, says one Evangelist. 1 

Jesus, always master of himself, replied to his adversaries : 
“ When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather to-morrow, 
for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul 
weather, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, 
ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the 
signs of the times ? ” 

The times, that great sky of history, of which the visible 
sky is but an image, were filled with signs which should have 
been clear to every eye. For had not the weeks of Daniel 
been accomplished, and the sceptre gone forth from Judah? 
The country lay in desolation, waiting for a saviour. The 
words of the prophets were fulfilled. Elias had come, in the 
person of John, as the precursor of the Kingdom ; and the 
miracles of Jesus, his Spirit, and his teaching satisfied all that 
the prophets had declared concerning the Messiah. And yet, 
in the face of these signs, the masters of Israel dared to ask 
for others ! No light can open the eyes which refuse to see. 

“Why,” cried Jesus, in words of passionate earnestness, 

“ Why doth this generation seek after a sign ? It is a wicked 
and adulterous generation.” Instead of obeying God, it only 
listens to the temptations of evil; instead of being as a faithful 
spouse, it is in adultery with Satan. 

“ It seeks after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto 
it but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” Jesus was referring to 
his death and resurrection, which was to be the great proof of 
his mission ; that crowning proof which should be furnished 
by those very unbelievers who, in their blindness, would not 
understand the rest, to whom it should be a crowning offence 
and stumbling-block. 

After these mysterious words, Jesus dismissed his ques¬ 
tioners. He could have no dealings with these sophists; he 


1 Mark viii. 12. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 457 

therefore left them, and departed in a ship with his disciples 
to Bethsaida, which was on the other side of the lake. 1 

In the hurry of their departure the disciples forgot to take 
bread with them. Jesus was still sorrowful and indignant at 
the attitude of the Pharisees with their invincible determi¬ 
nation to reject' God’s call, and the darkness in which they 
wilfully wrapped themselves. Suddenly he said to those 
whom he had chosen, “ Take heed, beware of the leaven of 
the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” 

The disciples did not understand the meaning hidden 
under this image of the leaven ; they were only thinking of 
the provisions they had forgotten, reproaching one another 
for their negligence, and asking themselves how they should 
live if the Master, according to his custom, led them to some 
desert place. 

Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, which they did not dare 
to speak openly, said : “ Why reason ye among yourselves 
because ye have no bread ? O ye of little faith, perceive ye 
not, neither do ye understand ? Have ye your heart yet 
hardened ? Having eyes, see ye not ? and having ears, hear 
ye not ? and do ye not remember ? 

“ When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how 
many baskets full of fragments took ye up ? ” “ Twelve,” 

replied the disciples. 

“ And when the seven among four thousand, how many 
baskets full of fragments took ye up ? ” And they said, 
“ Seven.” 

Then he added, “ Why do ye trouble yourselves ? Cannot 
I feed you ? But it was not concerning bread that I spoke 
when I said, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of 
the Sadducees.” 

At last they understood to what he referred. 

Jesus at all times tried to elevate his disciples’ thoughts 
by concealing truths under the veil of chosen symbols, which 

i Matt. vlii. 22, etc. 


458 


JESUS CHRIST. 


the various incidents of life suggested, and which he left to 
them to interpret. Here he wished to warn them that the 
dominating influence of the Pharisees, which tended to choke 
the good grain of his teaching, was likely to prove a source 
of danger. 


When they had crossed the lake they landed, and came to 
Bethsaida. 

And they brought a blind man unto Jesus, and besought 
him to touch him. The faith of these people was so great, 
that they were persuaded that he could heal him merely by 
the laying on of hands. 

Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out 
of the town, to avoid the tumult of the crowd. Then he 
anointed his eyes with spittle, and laid his hands upon him 
and asked him if he saw anything. 

“ I see,” said the blind man, " men as trees walking.” 

Then Jesus put again his hands upon his eyes, and 
the blind man began to see. Gradually he saw everything 
clearly, and was healed. 

“ Go to thy house,” said Jesus, as he sent him away, “ and 
if thou go into the town tell no man what hath befallen 
thee” 

This graphic account, given with full details, was evidently 
obtained from an eye-witness. St. Mark, who relates it, was 
no doubt repeating the description of St. Peter, one of the 
three apostles whom Jesus loved to take with him, even when 
he avoided the crowd and his other disciples. 


The full scope of the miraculous acts in the life of 
our Saviour would not be rightly grasped if, after the 
manner of the crowd, we admired only the external and 
material element in them. It is not enough to recognise 
in them merely the divine proofs of his mission, but we 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 459 

must regard them as “ signs,” as St. John so expressively 
calls them. 

Every act of Jesus is a lesson of profound meaning. 

The healing of the blind man of Bethsaida is the living 
symbol of the progressive action of Jesus, bringing into the 
light all those who do not see the truth of God. 

In the same way, by satisfying the people with loaves, 
which were miraculously multiplied, he revealed himself as 
the sustainer of mankind, and by giving sight to blind men 
he showed himself to be the light of the soul. 

Man has lost the knowledge of the divine world, he 
wanders in darkness, incapable of understanding God; 
Jesus comes to him, takes him by the hand, draws him aside, 
and, by gradually opening his eyes to the light of eternal 
truth, he fulfils towards him one of the most necessary 
Messianic functions. 

This work of spiritual healing is seen in its greatest 
beauty in those Galilaeans who were chosen to be his apostles. 
The last months in Galilee were dedicated to it. By isolating 
himself more from the crowd and the towns, Jesus gained a 
closer intimacy with his disciples, and prepared them to receive 
those higher communications which were more difficult to 
understand and more unlooked for. The secret work of the 
Master in its very essence cannot be described, for it is the 
invisible work of the invisible Spirit in the unfathomable 
depths of the conscience. But the results are known to us. 
We can see the starting-point and the goal, and we can follow 
in the Gospel narratives each successive phase of the gradual 
transformation. 

The disciples, who were sprung from the Jewish masses, 
had to be led quietly out of the troubled atmosphere of doubt 
and error. Once brought into personal contact with Jesus, 
they could feel the all-powerful influence of his Spirit ; and 
being thus, little by little, initiated into truth and virtue, they 
found his real nature, his divine power, his teaching, his 
36 


460 


JESUS CHRIST. 


precepts, and designs, dawn almost insensibly upon them. In 
less than three years, these fishers of the lake, these tax- 
gatherers, these children of the soil, cast off their primitive 
nature, and assumed the nature of their Master. He became 
their wisdom and strength, their soul and their spirit, and by 
him alone they both thought and acted. “ I live no longer,” 
one of them said in after-years, “but it is he who liveth in 
me.” 1 No such transformation is to be met with in the whole 
of secular history. 

Thus were the disciples, the constant witnesses of his 
miracles, subdued at length by his grandeur and his divinity. 
But there remained in his weakness, his sorrows, his humilia¬ 
tion, and his death, a deep and tragic mystery, of which they 
had no conception. And yet this mystery was on the eve of 
its fulfilment, and the time was come that it should be 
revealed to them by the Master. 


CHAPTER XI. 


THE FUTURE DEATH OF THE MESSIAH. THE 
TRANSFIGURATION. 

JESUS only made a short halt at Bethsaida. After his final 
rupture with the people of Galilee, his life was one long 
journey, far away from Capernaum and from the lake, through 
towns and villages, where he endeavoured to pass unknown. 
He had travelled through the borders of the country of Tyre 
and Sidon and throughout Decapolis, and he now sought 
with his disciples a more complete solitude in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Caesarea. 

The territory lying on the east of the Jordan between 
Julias and Caesarea is a wild mountainous waste, where even 
ruins are rare. In the time of Herod it must have been 
sparsely populated. It was traversed by the great Roman 
road which led from Damascus to Jerusalem. 

Jesus must have crossed this road near the Bridge of the 
Daughters of Jacob, as he journeyed towards the villages in the 
neighbourhood of the town which Philip 1 the tetrarch had 
so much beautified. We have no details of his apostolic and 
public work in this country, which he was visiting for the first 
time ; as in other places, those who were sick and suffering, 
cried to him, and he comforted and healed them. Neverthe¬ 
less his real object was not to preach the Gospel in the 
tetrarchy of Philip, but rather to prepare his disciples for the 
tragic fate which awaited him. The scenes of close spiritual 


1 Matt. xvi. 13, etc.; Mark viii. 27, etc. 


462 


JESUS CHRIST. 


communion between him and them threw all other events into 
the shade, in the memory of those who were present; they oc¬ 
cupy the whole period intervening between the ministry in Gali¬ 
lee and the supreme event which was reserved for Judaea and 
Jerusalem. 

At this time two conflicting feelings were struggling for the 
mastery in the soul of Jesus ; bitter sorrow at the desertion of 
the people, whom he had tried in vain to rally to the faith, 
and thrilling joy at the sight of his disciples, faithful and be¬ 
lieving. They, however, do not seem to have felt either trouble 
or anguish at the defection of the people which so grieved 
their Master; the more he was deserted by them, the more 
closely did they gather round him. Secure of the protection 
of an invisible force against all the dangers of popular impulse, 
and unshaken in their confidence, they surrendered themselves 
calmly to the glorious dreams of the future Kingdom, and 
to the illusions which the wisdom of Jesus was so quickly to 
dispel. 

One day, Jesus and the disciples who were with him were 
walking from* village to village round about Caesarea. Jesus 
wished to elicit from them a new and decisive confession of 
their faith. 1 It was evening, and he had prayed alone, accord¬ 
ing to his custom. Prayer was not for him merely a complete 
surrender of his spirit, his will, and all his human faculties to 
God his Father ; it was also an all-powerful though invisible 
means of influencing the souls of those whom he wished to 
save, to elevate, and to strengthen. Being alone with his dis¬ 
ciples, he asked them this question : “ Whom do men say that 
I am ? ” 

Jesus knew the rumours which were current among the 
people on this subject; he questioned his followers, not in 

1 Matt. xvi. 13, etc.; Mark viii. 27, etc.; Luke ix. 18, etc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 463 

order to inform himself, but to lead them on to proclaim in 
opposition to the errors of the people the truth concerning 
himself. The strength of the opposition between the disciples 
and the crowd on this point, will enable us to judge of the 
gulf which henceforward was to divide them. 

The disciples replied : 

“ Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some Elias; 
and others Jeremias, or one of the old prophets risen again/' 

This testimony was a true expression of the state of public 
opinion. The people no longer saw in Jesus the Messiah 
whom they had dreamt of, he was only in their eyes one of 
the prophets who were come to prepare the way. 

“ And ye,” said Jesus, “ whom say ye that I am ? ” Peter, 
who had already protested the fidelity of the Twelve to the 
Master at the time of the crisis at Capernaum, 1 now confessed 
in the name of all their faith in his divinity. 

“ Thou art the Christ,” he cried, " the Son of the living 
God.” 

These words of Peter were not inspired by a vague con¬ 
fidence in the superhuman grandeur of Jesus, but by a lumin¬ 
ous, distinct, and discerning faith; though few, they are all- 
containing, for they declare the Messianic character of Jesus 
and his divine sonship. 

The very essence of faith is that it delivers us over entirely 
to him who is its object. He who believes is no longer 
his own master; he belongs unconditionally to him in 
whom he believes. He renounces everything: his ideas, 
his interests, his own personal initiative. He dies to him¬ 
self to live spiritually in another; he gives his own life for 
the life of another. No one but God has the right to demand 
this absolute faith, for every man has faults, imperfections, and 
errors, and therefore to surrender oneself to a man is to 
become the slave of that man’s less worthy attributes. 


John vi. 69. 


464 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Jesus demanded absolute faith, and that is a sign that he 
claimed the rights of God. But after having preached the 
Gospel in Galilee for more than seven months, to win this faith, 
only a few of the poorest and the most ignorant were con¬ 
vinced. Those things which the learned men; the Scribes, 
the Masters, and the Rabbis ; neither could nor would under¬ 
stand, they understood and proclaimed ; what their nation 
rejected they accepted. With this handful of believers Jesus 
was able to found his Kingdom, to move and to conquer the 
world. 

The confession of Peter touched him. 

“ Blessed art thou,” he cried, “ Simon Bar-jona: for flesh 
and blood 1 hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven.” 

It is not, indeed, in the power of man to recognise by faith 
that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God ; neither genius, 
nor learning, nor human traditions can exalt man so high. It 
is necessary that God himself should reveal the Christ to 
us, and that man should accept this revelation. The 
Father has multiplied and still multiplies witnesses around 
his Messenger and his Son; but the man who relies only on 
his own genius, learning, and traditions blinds himself; he 
rejects the witnesses, contests the miracles, opposes his vain 
arguments to the word of the prophets, and remains in his 
darkness. Jesus is to him merely a wise man or a prophet, 
and not the one Messenger, the Son of the living God. 
No wise man, and no prophet, can save the world, but God 
alone; and not to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus, is not 
to know him aright. To conquer evil, we must have God in 
us ; and to have God in us, we must believe in God. 

The Kingdom of Jesus did, in truth, begin on that day 

1 A Hebraic expression constantly used in sacred literature and par¬ 
ticularly in the Talmud, to express the terrestrial, carnal, animal nature of 
man in opposition to God. 



THE HORNS OF HATTIN (KURUN HATTfN). 

The traditional site of the place where the four thousand were fed. 


















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 465 

when, surrounded by his disciples, he was recognised and pro¬ 
claimed by them as the Messiah, the Son of God. This he 
now declared solemnly, as, addressing Peter, he explained 
to him the mystery of the new name with which he had 
baptised him, when he saw him, for the first time, on the 
banks of the Jordan. 

Thou knowest me to be the Son of the living God : “ And 
I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.” 

Faith in Jesus as God is shown here in all its grandeur. 
It was in reward of faith that Peter, the first of the believers, 
was chosen to be the human foundation, the firm rock of the 
Church; and on him all the elect of the future were to lean, that 
is, whosoever following his example, shall believe that Jesus 
is the Son of God. The faith of Peter and his successors will 
be an unfailing faith. Others may be shaken, but Peter and 
his successors, never. 

The great design of the Kingdom of God now begins to 
show itself: the plan of Jesus is disclosed to the eyes of his 
disciples by this word “the Church,” which he had not em¬ 
ployed before. 

He will call to himself and gather together in him the 
chosen ones, who are scattered throughout the earth and 
among all nations ; and this gathering together in one faith 
constitutes the Church. Jesus created her to be indestructible 
and to be invincible. No power in this world, not even that 
of hell, which contains them all and represents the spirit of 
evil, can prevail against her. She will withstand everything; 
whether arrogant science, or false religion, or material culture, 
or the cunning or brutality of politics, or the corruption which 
destroys everything, or man’s inconstancy, or time itself. The 


466 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Spirit is its strength, and nothing terrestrial, nothing human 
nor infernal, will overcome the Spirit. 

Jesus wished to provide a government for this multitude 
of believers, an authority within his Church; and it was upon 
Peter that he conferred this power, by giving him, as he sym¬ 
bolically expressed it, the keys of the Kingdom. Peter will 
rule those who believe; he, the instrument of the Spirit of 
God, will give the Spirit to those who are worthy, and with¬ 
hold it from those who are unworthy ; those who receive it 
will be admitted into the Kingdom, but those who do not 
receive it will be rejected. Jesus will remain the invisible, 
and Peter the visible head, and in his mission he shall not fail, 
for Jesus has promised him. 

Thus wonderfully is human reason set at nought. A 
Galilaean workman, proclaimed the Son of God by a fisher¬ 
man of Bethsaida, announces that he will build a structure 
which will be proof against the powers of death, in a world 
where everything falls to ruin, where time alone suffices to 
obliterate all things, where nothing is enduring, no creation ot 
genius, no religion, state, conquest, civilization, race, school, 
legislation, system ; he promises immortality to this structure, 
which is his Church : and the immovable foundation on which 
he builds is a weak and mortal man, whom he invests with 
divine authority. Nothing more marvellous is related in 
history: it throws everything, Vedaism, Buddhism, Parseeism, 
Mahometanism, and Philosophism, into the shade ; it is with¬ 
out a parallel in the works of man. 

Jesus constitutes in himself the one centre, the absolute 
power. In him alone we must believe, to him alone we must 
attach ourselves by faith. He does not appeal to any par¬ 
ticular race or nation, all are included ; all who live and 
think, all who sigh, and all who hope. There is no system, 
no written law, but there is the Spirit of God, which is his 
Spirit, and the authority and obligation to spread it, in his 
name, throughout the world. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 467 

All things are corroded by perverted reason, destroyed by 
selfish wilfulness, mortified by tainting corruption; but the 
power of the Spirit opposes everlasting truths to the hollow 
theories of reason ; it opposes justice, charity, and holiness, to 
self-seeking, violence, and voluptuousness ; sacred and sancti¬ 
fying rites to the superstitions of false religions; and an 
immutable and peaceful authority to the changing and tyran¬ 
nical powers of this world. 

When we see, after eighteen centuries, the triumphal 
realisation of this plan, framed by Jesus in the solitude of the 
mountains of Caesarea, it is impossible for us to attribute it to 
one who was only a great man. The boldness of the work, 
the magnitude of the difficulties, the weakness, nay, the insig¬ 
nificance, of the means employed, prevent us from so doing ; 
they force us to recognise, in the framer of this design, the 
virtue and wisdom of God. 

Jesus worked with absolute independence and authority; 
he had need of no created thing, his force was all-sufficing. 
Apparent failures, which disconcert even the greatest men of 
genius, never stopped him, they only served to hasten the 
fulfilment of his designs. 

When the people of Galilee forsook him, he gave a fresh 
impulse to his work. At first, he had attracted followers to him; 
then, from among their number, he set apart a chosen twelve, 
whom he made apostles; now he gives pre-eminence to one of 
the Twelve, and promises him, under the symbol of the keys, 
the full power which should enable him to govern his Kingdom. 

Those who have faith feel the need of imparting it to 
others, they wish to declare it and spread it abroad. At the 
close of this scene, the disciples, emboldened by the words of 
Jesus, desired to publish everywhere, and to all people, who 
their Master was, but he restrained them : their hour was not 
yet come, they could not hope to convince the people of his 
divinity, when Jesus himself had failed. 


468 


JESUS CHRIST. 


It were better that they should keep their faith and hope 
in the depths of their hearts, for there they would grow in 
strength and become firm and concentrated. The Master 
straitly charged them and commanded them to tell no man 
that he was the Christ, for this title was likely to be mis¬ 
interpreted by the crowd. To publish abroad that Jesus was 
the Messiah, would be to expose him to a renewal of the Gali- 
laean crisis, which he had so lately allayed by his wisdom, 
promptitude, and firmness. Besides, the disciples themselves 
cherished hopes of earthly grandeur for him whom they 
proclaimed the Son of God. They lived near to him, in the 
bright light of his holiness and his power; and the countless 
miracles which they witnessed, developed in their minds a 
boundless confidence in him who was obeyed, at once, by 
nature, men, and spirits. 

Jesus, feeling them to be now more firm in the faith, at 
length disclosed to them the secret of his destiny; a mournful 
secret to which he had hitherto only made obscure allusions . 1 2 

“The Son of man must go unto Jerusalem and suffer 
many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief 
priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise 
again. L 

Man goes to meet his fate blindly, but Jesus perceived 
his, even to the smallest details. It was revealed to him in 
the will of his Father, of which he had perfect knowledge, in 
the prophecies which foretold his sufferings, in the progressive 
development of events, and in the hatred of his enemies which 
nothing but his death would satisfy. In disclosing the future 
to his disciples, he must have betrayed the sorrow which filled 
his soul at times, even unto death. 

The disciples seem to have rejected this solemn declaration 
of our Lord. They could not even imagine that their Master 
should suffer such a grievous death. Their faith in his divine 

1 Matt. iii. 15 and ref. ; John ii. 20, iii. 14, vi. 52. 

2 Matt. xvi. 21, etc.; Mark viii. 31, etc. ; Luke ix. 22 etc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 469 

power, their love for himself, their illusions concerning the 
Messiah, all combined to render such an idea impossible. 

Peter, on this occasion, once again expressed the thoughts 
of all. He took Jesus aside, and, prompted only by feelings 
of love and devotion, reproached him for looking forward to 
so sad a destiny, saying : 

“ Be it far from thee, Lord ; this shall not be unto thee.” 

Jesus turned to him, and in a severe tone rebuked him, 
saying : 

“ Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: 
for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those 
that be of men.” 

The Christ of God does not fulfil the expectations of 
human wisdom; he is the embodiment of the conception of 
the eternal wisdom. Those who try to know him by means 
of the former, will fail; they will never understand the two¬ 
fold mystery of his divinity and humanity; they will deny 
the one or the other, the divinity because it seems too high, 
the humanity because it appears unworthy of him ; they will 
never penetrate the divine mystery of a Son of God devoted 
to death. It is a suffering God who saves mankind. If 
he were God alone, he would not know our griefs ; if he were 
man alone, he could not solace them : needs must that a God 
should go to death and suffer martyrdom. And human 
reason will, at the sight, be offended as Peter was ; but Jesus 
will thrust it from him, and command the believer to follow 
him, even though the way be stained with blood. 

After the severe rebuke addressed to Peter, Jesus wished 
to point out to his disciples and to all, what he demanded 
from those who would follow him faithfully. No teacher has 
ever made greater demands. He insists on a complete renun¬ 
ciation, a generous acceptance of all sorrows, even to the 
sacrifice of life itself. 

It is not enough to proclaim him the Son of God ; we 


470 


JESUS CHRIST. 


must share the sorrowful destiny of the Son of Man. Jesus 
saw the cross on which he should die, at the time when he 
framed this comprehensive law of heroism, which has remained 
the supreme law for the true disciple of Jesus. 

“ If any man will come after me,” he cried, making a sign 
to the people to draw near, “ let him deny himself, and take up 
his cross, and follow me.” 

Jesus did not hesitate to set at defiance the natural instinct 
of self-preservation which shrinks from suffering and death; 
it is his will that we should follow in his steps, even though 
we should be led to suffer or to die. The true life, even at the 
price of suffering death, cannot be too dearly bought. 

“ Whosoever will save his soul rather than follow me,” he 
said again, “ will lose the life which I will give him : and he 
who is not afraid to lose the life of to-day, for my sake and 
the Gospel’s, will save his soul, and will live through me the 
life which is eternal.” 

It is the soul which must be saved, for that is the whole 
man. “ For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul ? ” 

This doctrine, so disdainful of all men’s earthly aims and 
ambitions, this spiritual teaching, which Jesus delivered as the 
Messiah, the divine representative, would naturally be received 
with considerable scorn and contempt; not only by the Sad- 
ducean sceptics, but by the Pharisees, infected with the pride 
of their class, and even by the people whom they led astray. 
Jesus, who was himself one day to suffer crucifixion knew 
to what opprobrium his followers would be exposed ; he fore¬ 
saw that the weak and faint-hearted would be ashamed for 
him, and, knowing that man finds shame more terrible to face 
than death, he said : 

“ Men will be ashamed of me and of my words in this 
adulterous and sinful generation ; but whosoever shall be 
ashamed of me, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 471 

when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy 
angels .” 1 

The conception of Jesus is boundless in its range. We 
feel that he lives at the same time on earth and in heaven, 
among men and with his Father ; throughout this life of 
sorrow he keeps the glorious aim in view, and as he wishes us 
to sacrifice all to gain eternal life, so he wishes us to tremble 
before the terrors of that day when he shall come in the 
majesty of his glory and the omnipotence of his righteousness. 
The gloomy prophecies of the Master weighed upon the souls of 
his disciples ; the thought of what he was to suffer at Jerusalem, 
and the severe duties imposed on those who aspired to follow 
him, filled them with misgiving and with a secret fear. If he 
whom they confessed to be the Son of God was doomed to 
die, what would become of his glorious Kingdom? This 
thought disconcerted their hopes ; they turned their minds 
from it, not daring to think of it, or even to question their 
Master. 

Weak man cherishes the hope that he will escape the 
troubles which await him, by closing his eyes to them. Jesus 
had regard to this weakness of his disciples, and, to restore 
their courage, he was silent concerning his sufferings, and 
spoke to them of his future glory. One day, feeling them to 
be in great dejection, he even assured them, in a solemn tone, 
that some of them were shortly to behold it. 

“ Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, 
which shall not taste of death till they have seen the Son of 
man coming in his power and in his kingdom .” 2 These 
mysterious words referred to a marvellous event, which was 
soon to occur to justify them. 

Six days after, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, 
and brought them up into a high mountain, apart, to pray. 

1 Mark viii. 38; ix.‘ 1. 

2 Luke ix. 27, 28; Matt. xvi. 28; Matt. xvii. 1. 


472 


JESUS CHRIST. 


The name of this mountain is not mentioned in the 
Gospels ; the only witness who has alluded to it in his 
writings is Peter, and he calls it “ the Holy Mount .” 1 But 
the tradition which points to Tabor has never, during so many 
centuries, been broken or contradicted . 2 On the contrary, it 
is remarkable that, up to the eighth century, the natives 
called Mount Tabor the “ Age-Mons,” a name which can 
have no other origin than the “ Agion Oros ” of Peter. Erect 
as a pyramid, it stands like a gigantic pedestal, nearly two 
thousand feet in height, at the north-east extremity of the 
plain of Jezreel. A low ridge of rock separates it from the 
mountains of Nazareth ; its sides are covered with beautiful 
oaks, among which the road winds up. The summit is an oval 
tableland, the southern half of which is piled with ruins; 
some, the remains of ancient fortresses of the time of the 
kings of Israel and of the Arabian conquest; some, the time- 
honoured fragments of three churches built in the time of 
Helena and dedicated to Jesus, to Moses, and to Elias. 

From the top of the dismantled walls of the old crumbling 
towers, the whole expanse of Galilee may be seen, with its 
mountain-chains, its valleys, its plains, and a blue corner of 
its lake. There is very little vegetation at the present time, 
only a few black and grey specks mark the scattered trees, 
which the axe of man has spared. 

Everywhere there is green grass, interrupted by ploughed 
fields which extend in long dark bands like the Bedouins* 
tents of skins. Here and there nestles a village, with its 
square hive-like houses crowded one upon the other. As far 
as the eye can see, over this hilly land, all is bare and sombre 
in colour. In the extreme distance to the north, behind the 
mountains of Safed, is the white crest of Lebanon and the 
summit of Mount Hermon, like the snow-white head of an 
old man. To the east lie the mountains of Jaulan in a long 

1 II. Peter i. 18. 

2 See Appendix L: Authenticity of Tabor. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 473 

straight line, varied here and there by some higher peaks. 
Further still, to the east, are the blue-grey mountains of Arabia 
Petraea and of the great desert. The deep valley of the Jordan, 
hollowed in the rocks, enables us to see, on the eastern side, 
the wild gorges through which the rivers Hieromax, Zerka, 
and Arnon rush down; and on the western side the great 
Wadys Bireh and Ajalun, sloping from the tableland of 
Jezreel. To the south, a large mass, of the same tint as the 
mountains of Arabia ; these are the plateaux of Moab } which 
overlook the Dead Sea. To the west, the rugged ranges of 
Judaea, the monotonous heights of Samaria, and the long 
rampart of Carmel, bounding the plain of Megiddo. 

A glimpse of the Mediterranean may be had by looking 
through a hollow of Mount Carmel and along a neck of the 
mountains of Nazareth ; it appears as a blue spot on the 
clear background of the sky. This magnificent sight 
completes the vast horizon. 

It was here, in the very heart of this Galilee which had 
seen the beauty of the Son of Man in all its mild lustre; it 
was here, on a remote summit, bathed in light, that Jesus 
brought his three chosen disciples, one starry August night, 
and showed them his eternal glory in a brilliancy which 
eclipsed even the Eastern sky. 

While he prayed he was transfigured before them. 

His face was changed, it shone as the sun ; his garments 
became white as snow, whiter than any fuller can make 
them. 

And, behold, two men appeared unto them, talking with 
him : they were Moses and Elias, enveloped in glory. They 
spoke of his death. 

But Peter, and they that were with him, were heavy with 
sleep. When they were awake they saw him in his glory, 
with the two men with him : and, as they departed from him, 
Peter said unto Jesus, “ Master, it is good for us to be here : 


474 


JESUS CHRIST. 


if thou wilt, let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, one 
for Moses, and one for Elias.” 

While he was speaking, a bright cloud came and over¬ 
shadowed them ; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying: 
“ This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear 
ye him.” 

And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, 
and were sore afraid. 

Jesus came and touched them : 

“ Arise,” he said, “ and be not afraid.” 

They lifted up their eyes and looked around, and saw no 
one ; Jesus was alone with them . 1 

The impenetrable wall which divides the terrestrial world 
from the divine world, was for a moment broken down, and 
the different conditions of mankind were made apparent. 

Above the three disciples, who still bore the burden 
of life and who were heavy with sleep, which is the image of 
death, there appeared Elias and Moses, both of whom had 
entered into eternity. They spoke with Jesus, who is Lord 
over them, and who, in the unity of his person, reunites all 
the worlds in glory. His raiment, of the whiteness of snow, 
is the symbol of that which matter will become at the time of 
its divine transformation ; his shining body foreshadows what 
we ourselves shall one day be; his soul, which embraces the 
infinite, reveals the destiny of all those spirits who are called 
to the true life of God. The bright cloud, which envelops 
everything, represents the ineffable Being, who will gather to 
him all the chosen ones, when they will possess for ever the 
joy and the glory of the Son of God. 

This is Christ as we behold him in the majesty of his 
Kingdom, in that of his Father and the holy angels. 

This marvel outweighs all the others. When Jesus com¬ 
manded spirits with authority, remitted sins, converted the 
hearts of men with a word, healed the sick, controlled nature, 

1 Matt. xvii. i; Mark ix. 2 ; Luke ix. 28. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 475 

the wind and the tempest, he manifestly exercised his in¬ 
fluence on things outside himself; at his Transfiguration he 
himself became the object of the miracle. The divinity 
within him, which was hidden under the veil of a mortal body 
like our own, for a moment shone through the veiling flesh, 
tore from it all obscurity, weakness, suffering, and mortality, to 
clothe it again with light and glory. When the spirit and 
soul of man is bathed in the glory of God, when the soul, 
pervaded by God, envelops the body which it quickens with 
its own beauty ; when matter pervaded by the Spirit through¬ 
out all its kingdom, suffers a glorious transformation which 
renders it a worthy habitation for the sons of God, glorified 
in the image of Jesus, then the Kingdom of Heaven shall be 
consummated. 

God appeared in Jesus at his Transfiguration, as he will 
in us at the end of time. 

By this revelation to three of his disciples, Jesus wished 
to show to all mankind, the glorious goal which he should 
reach through suffering and death. Sorrow and death are but 
the way ; the end for him, as for us, is the transfiguration of 
our whole being into the splendour of God. 

It was not only his face and his body which were of a 
dazzling brightness, for even his raiment was white as snow; 
all that touched Jesus was transformed into light. 

Two mysterious figures were near him : Moses, the great 
lawgiver, Elias, the great prophet; they spoke of his death, 
that “ Exodus ” which should take place at Jerusalem. By 
going there to die, Jesus fulfilled the Law represented by 
Moses, and realised the word of the prophets, represented by 
Elias. His end was to be more grand than theirs ; not to die, 
like Moses, at God’s kiss ; not to be translated, like Elias, 
in a chariot of fire ; he was about to surrender himself through 
love in an ignominious death, to the anger of God. 

The disciples present at this manifestation, which the 
prayer of Jesus had called forth from the very depths of 
37 


47 6 


JESUS CHRIST. 


heaven, were asleep. When they awoke they were filled with 
an inward joy ; they wished to dwell for ever with their 
Master on Mount Tabor. The close communion of God with 
the pure heart is always accompanied by such unspeakable 
transports which are yet akin to terror ; for in the presence of 
the Almighty, man sinks into insignificance. 

God revealed his presence, under the image of the bright 
cloud which enveloped Jesus, Elias, Moses, and the three 
Apostles. This same cloud which was shown in the wilder¬ 
ness 1 to the people of God, and at the dedication of 
Solomon’s Temple , 2 will be seen again in the triumph of the 
Ascension of Jesus. A voice came from the cloud, the voice 
of God himself, saying: “ This is my beloved Son, whom I 
have chosen ; hear him.” A new and solemn intervention of 
the Father was necessary to persuade and command the 
disciples to follow his son and to do his bidding, in the 
fulfilment of his sad destiny. 

Peter, who had said to Jesus, “ Be it far from thee, Lord, 
this shall not be unto thee,” heard at this time the voice of 
God himself, saying : “ Listen to my chosen one, whatsoever 
he saith unto thee, follow him whither he leads thee, whatever 
be the road.” And to emphasize this unique sovereign 
authority of Jesus, the only ruler of men, at that very instant 
the great lawgiver and the great prophet disappeared, and 
Jesus remained alone. 

He is the law, he is the light ; all things that were before 
him vanish at his presence; he alone shows mankind the end 
for which it should strive, he alone opens the way by which it 
should travel. Though the way be rough, the end will sur¬ 
pass our expectations. He has the right to require all things, 
for he can promise all ; if death is the way, we will walk with 
him to death, to enter into life. 


1 Exod. xiii. 21, etc.; xvi. io; xix. 9; xxxiii., xxxiv., xl passim. 
3 Chron. v. 13, 14. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 477 


The rationalist critics who systematically exclude every 
miraculous element from the life of Jesus, deny the fact of the 
Transfiguration, which is supernatural from beginning to end. 
They have analyzed it to its smallest details to demonstrate 
its impossibility and improbability. Such sceptics cannot 
accept the view that the body of Jesus was transformed 
into a luminous body, and that his raiment became more 
dazzling than snow; but experience shows that genius and 
goodness can impart to the human face a sort of spiritual glow. 
Their susceptibilities are hurt by the presence of two dead 
men, Elias and Moses, as though the dead no longer existed ; 
as though the connection between heaven and earth, between 
the kingdom of the dead and that of the living, was nothing 
but a dream. They ask how the Apostles could have recog¬ 
nised the two men who spoke to Jesus, and who are not men¬ 
tioned by the Evangelists by name ; as if their speech or the 
traditional and well-known conception which the Jews had 
formed of them were not enough to identify them. They 
have refused to understand the moral purpose of this divine 
scene, although that is yet another guarantee of its truthful¬ 
ness. They have tried to explain it; but their attempts are 
more feeble than their objections . 1 

The mythical school has seen in the event an invention of 
the disciples, for the purpose of glorifying their Master and 
of raising him above Moses and the Prophets. There is no 
evidence to support this fancy. The hypothesis of a legend 
does not at all explain the very precise historical details which 
in the three Gospels surround this event; it does not explain 
why Jesus sternly forbade his apostles to publish an event, 
which on this supposition never occurred; it is besides in 
opposition to the testimony of Peter, one of the witnesses, 
who wrote some years later: “ For we have not followed 
cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the 

1 Cf. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, II. Band ; Weiss, Evang. Geschichtr. 
I. Band. 


473 


JESUS CHRIST. 


power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were witnesses 
of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour 
and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the 
excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard 
when we were with him in the holy mount .” 1 

The mythical explanation will never prevail against such 
explicit testimony, which excludes at the same time the 
theory which has endeavoured to convert the actual scene 
into a mere subjective vision. 

Besides, it is difficult to believe that Jesus would have 
attached such importance to a dream of his disciples, or that 
he would have forbidden them to recount it until after his 
resurrection from the dead . 2 

An impartial mind, untrammelled by the narrowness of a 
system, will have no difficulty in choosing between the letter 
of the Gospel narratives and the so-called critical explana¬ 
tions. The narratives, indeed, dominate us by their divine 
grandeur ; but in this very grandeur consists their only 
difficulty, and this is explained by the power of God. The 
rationalist hypotheses are, it is true, more within our grasp, 
but they contradict the assertion of the witnesses, and they 
have nothing definite to rely upon to vindicate the arbitrary 
nature of their denial. The Gospels assert the positive mani¬ 
festations of God in opposition to the fanciful inventions of 
man. 

The Transfiguration was no mere accident in the life of 
Jesus, it was a direct result of the laws of its development. 
One of the most invariable of these is, that his humility as a 

1 II. Peter i. 16. Criticism, it is true, has endeavoured to dispute the 
authenticity of the Epistle, but it has not brought against it any decisive 
argument. The whole contents of the letter are a confirmation of the 
traditional opinion, and as early as the first century the work is quoted by 
St. Clement (Ep. ad Corinth ., ii.), by St. Polycarp {ad Thil. , n. i, 2, 5, 
etc.), and Papias (Euseb., Hist. Eccles ., iii. 39). 

2 Matt, xvii 9; Mark ix 8, 9 ; Luke ix. 36. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 479 

man always made his hidden Godhead to burst forth, and 
the more he abased himself by voluntarily accepting sacrifice, 
sorrow, and death, the more did his divinity shine brightly 
in him and exalt him. 

When he asked John to baptize him, like a sinner, the 
heavens opened above his head ; at the moment when he 
resolved to fulfil all the Law, he heard himself called the well- 
beloved Son of the Father. At the height of his triumph in 
Galilee, he renounced all temporal glory and repudiated the 
intervention of the people, who were ready to proclaim him 
king ; on the same night he walked on the waters, calmed the 
tempest, and showed himself lord over nature. 

Here he had just declared to his disciples that he must go 
to Jerusalem, to suffer and to die ; six days after he appears 
in the glory of his Kingdom, greater than Moses and Elias, 
universal and sole master, resplendent with light and immor¬ 
tality, transfigured in the radiance of his Father. Some 
months later, overwhelmed by the thought of his sufferings, 
he cried to his Father, “ Save me. . . but for suffering am 

I come. Father, glorify thy name.” A voice mighty as 
thunder, answered him : “ I will glorify it.” 

When his hour is come, he will submit to insult and 
death; he will descend into the tomb ; the living Spirit will 
raise him from death and the tomb to the glory of the 
Father. 


38 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE LAST CONVERSATIONS AT CAPERNAUM. 

A VISION, if only for a moment, of the truth, the beauty, the 
holiness, and the glory, which will be ours when the victory 
is won, is the great means of strengthening the failing courage 
and the feeble will, and of calming the troubles of the mind 
in presence of obstacles and dangers. At this sight hope 
lifts her head, faith grows bold, and the soul, exalted above 
itself, becomes capable of every effort. In this way, Jesus set 
in the hearts of his favoured three disciples a leaven which 
should spread its energy among all the rest, instilling into 
them a courage and faith against which oppression, despon¬ 
dency, and tribulation were to have no power. 

Jesus, on the following day, descended Mount Tabor with 
them, and, as he walked, he said unto them : 

“ Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen 
again from the dead .” 1 

The gifts of God exalt and expand the soul, but it is not 
good always to publish them. Their very grandeur often 
only attracts incredulity, and exposure becomes profanation. 
If treasured in the hearts of those who have witnessed them, 
they give strength and light; if prematurely divulged, their 
virtue evaporates and is lost. 

The three apostles, at the Master’s command, kept this 


Matt. xvii. 9, etc. ; Mark ix. 8, etc. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 481 

secret to themselves, seeking in vain to understand what he 
meant by the words “ until he be risen from the dead.” 

They asked themselves to what resurrection he alluded, 
and whether he spoke in a figure: was his body, indeed, to rise 
from the dead, or did he refer to the re-establishment of the 
Kingdom of Israel after his death? The latter hypothesis 
alone engaged their thoughts. “ Why,” they asked, “ do the 
Pharisees and Scribes say that Elias must come before the 
restitution of the Kingdom of Israel ?” 

Jesus replied: “Truly, Elias cometh first, before the 
advent of the Son of man, to restore all things and to prepare 
his wayj and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must 
suffer many things and be set at nought. But I say unto 
you, that Elias has already come, and they knew him not; 
and as it is written of him, they have done unto him 
whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man 
suffer of them.” 

The apostles understood that he spoke of John the Bap¬ 
tist. Suffering is the destined burden of all the messengers 
of God ; John the Baptist had already submitted to it, and 
now Jesus was about to take it upon his shoulders. 

On rejoining the disciples at the foot of the mountain , 1 he 
saw them surrounded by a numerous crowd, and the Scribes 
questioning with them ; his unexpected arrival caused great 
amazement: about his face there was still a reflection of the 
celestial light. They ran to him and saluted him : 

“ What question ye among yourselves ? ” he asked. 

“ Master,” answered one of the multitude, falling at his 
feet, “ I have brought my son to you : have pity on him, he 
is a lunatic, and suffers much: he is possessed of a dumb 
spirit. Whenever the spirit takes possession of him, it 
throws him on the ground, he foameth, and gnasheth with his 

1 Matt. xvii. 14, etc. ; Mark ix. 17, etc. ; Luke ix. 37, etc. 


482 


JESUS CHRIST 


teeth, and pineth away. I spake to thy disciples to cast him 
out, and they could not.” 

This lack of power in the disciples must have provoked 
the raillery and the reproach of the Pharisees among the 
crowd. Jesus was greatly struck with the general incredulity. 
All were wanting in faith : the father of the lunatic, the 
Scribes, the people, and even the disciples. 

He gave a cry of indignation : 

“ O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be 
with you ? How long shall I suffer you ? ” 

But, at the sight of any sorrow to be healed or comforted, 
his compassion got the better of every other feeling. 

“ Bring him unto me,” he said. 

As soon as the child saw Jesus, the spirit, tormenting him, 
threw him violently to the ground, and he wallowed, foaming. 

And he asked his father, “ How long is it since this came 
unto him ? ” 

“ Since his infancy. Often the spirit throws him into the 
fire and into the water to kill him. If thou canst do any¬ 
thing, have compassion on us and help us.” 

The father’s words, “ if thou canst,” betrayed his little 
faith. 

“If thou canst believe,” said Jesus, “all things are possible 
to him that believeth.” 

And straightway the father cried out, with tears: 

“ Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief! ” 

The people came running together about Jesus, and he 
rebuked the foul spirit: 

“ Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of 
this child, and enter no more into him.” 

The spirit uttered a great cry, and rent him sore and came 
out of him. The child fell down as though dead. 

“ He is dead,” they said. 

But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and 
he arose ; he was healed. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 483 

The vivid and detailed description which the second Gos¬ 
pel gives us of the sick child, suggests epilepsy. It would be 
wrong to conclude that this physical infirmity excluded de¬ 
moniac possession, and that in this case, as in the rest, only 
ignorance and superstition saw in it the action of the evil 
spirit. Jesus paid no attention to the bodily malady. The 
violent disorders visible in the case of the poor epileptic, were, 
in his eyes, merely the manifestation of a Satanic power, to 
which he was in bondage. It was this mysterious agent that 
he addressed, and, by casting it out, he healed the child. 

The whole secret of his influence over mankind, en¬ 
thralled by the powers of evil, is made manifest in this act. 
By it, mankind, enfranchised, listens to the voice of God, 
learns to praise him, and recovers, with its liberty, the peace 
which nothing can again disturb. 

Immediately after, Jesus left the people marvelling at the 
power of God, and the Scribes in their discomfiture, and took 
refuge in a house with his disciples. 

Having proved their own powerlessness, this cure appeared 
so much the more miraculous to the disciples. They went to 
their Master, and said to him secretly: “ Why could not we 
cast out this devil ? ” 

“Because of your unbelief” Jesus replied: “for verily I 
say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,” a 
small seed of great vitality, “ ye shall say unto this mountain, 
Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove. Nothing 
shall be impossible unto you.” 

By the teaching of Jesus, it is faith, indeed, which makes 
us participate in the very life and power of God. It is no 
longer the man that works in the believer, it is God himself. 

Then he added, “ This kind of devil,” sensual and obsti¬ 
nate, “ goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” 

These two words express what faith should be: by fast¬ 
ing, faith tears from us all material and physical strength ; by 


4 8 4 


JESUS CHRIST. 


prayer, it unites us to the Being, the light, the goodness, the 
power of God. The human being is completely subverted, he 
no longer has root in the terrestrial world, to which he dies ; 
he has his spring of life in the divine world, of which he be¬ 
comes the irresistible instrument. 

When we trace through centuries the influence of Jesus 
on the hearts of men, we see that they are saved only by this 
double force, which he revealed to his disciples. If the God¬ 
fearing man does not, by rigorous abstinence, sacrifice all 
that is human, terrestrial, and created; if he does not open 
his inmost heart by prayer to the love of God, the source 
of all heavenly strength, he is powerless to raise the souls of 
others above earthly things, and to win them to the spiritual 
life. The invisible Christ must intervene, his strength 
must supplement the weakness of his messenger. 

This conversation occurred in the neighbourhood of Mount 
Tabor. Jesus and his disciples proceeded in the direction of 
Capernaum, passing through Galilee. As he did not wish to 
excite the attention of the people, the journey was made in 
secret. On his way he taught the disciples. 

The thought of his approaching death never left him, and 
he reminded them of it. As they walked along, he said to 
them suddenly : “ Keep these things in your heart: the Son 
of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they 
shall kill him, and the third day after his death he shall rise 
again.” 

But they did not understand this mystery, which remained 
a secret to them ; and not only did they not understand it, 
but they feared even to question the Master on the subject . 1 

Man shrinks from the truth if it is antagonistic and 
humiliating to his reason. Nothing appeared so incongruous 
to the Jews as the idea of a suffering and sacrificed Messiah. 


1 Luke ix. 45. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 485 

The apostles were worthy of their race ; even after having 
confessed with true faith the divine sonship of their Master, 
they obstinately refused to believe in his humiliation and in 
his momentary defeat; while Jesus is trying to lead their 
thoughts back to this idea, in order to familiarize them gradu¬ 
ally with the sad and terrible aspect of his fate, they are only 
thinking of the glory of his reign and discussing with one 
another, unknown to their Master, their own precedence in 
the Messianic Kingdom. 

The little company of travellers reached Capernaum ; and 
their return was marked by the following incident . 1 

It was just the time when those who received the tribute 
money were collecting the tax ; they came to Peter and 
asked him : “ Doth not your Master pay the didrachma ? ” 2 
“ My Master doth,” replied Peter. 

But when he was come into the house to inform Jesus, 
Jesus forestalled him. 

“ What thinkest thou, Simon ? ” he said to him, “ of whom 
do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute ? of their 
own children, or of strangers ? ” “ Of strangers,” said Peter. 

Then Jesus answered, “The children are free; notwith¬ 
standing, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and 
cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up ; and 
when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of 
money (a stater) ; that take, and give unto them for me and 
thee.” 

This incident, which the first Evangelist alone has 

1 Matt. xvii. 23, etc. 

2 Some authors suppose that the tribute demanded of Jesus was the 
tax for the maintenance of the Temple. This interpretation may be 
admitted; it in no way alters the signification of the event. Cf. Lightfoot, 
Horae Hebraicae et Talmud , ad h. 1 . 

The tax for the Temple, like the Roman tribute, was two drachmas a 
head. The former was collected in the month Adar (February), a little 
before the beginning of the ecclesiastical year ; the latter at the feast of 
Tabernacles, in the month Tisri (September-October), before the be¬ 
ginning of the civil year. 


486 


JESUS CHRIST 


recorded in his narrative, contains an allusion to the divine 
sonship of Jesus. Though he rejected all temporal royalty 
he implied that he was the son of the eternal King; and, 
in virtue of this right, he declares himself and all those who 
participate in his Kingdom to be free. But the Son of God, 
who took upon him the form of a servant to save men, in 
dealing with men, knew also how to renounce his rights. 
Charity is higher than justice; to claim one’s rights is an 
act of justice, to renounce them an act of charity. Jesus 
followed the dictates of charity, and gives an example of 
renunciation to man, who is always so hard and so grasping 
when his rights or his interests are touched : he will pay the 
tribute, but only by making his divine power manifest, and 
by sending Peter to find the two didrachmas in the mouth of 
the fish. 

At the same time, the disciples entered the house of 
Cephas, and, when they were all together again, Jesus asked 
them : “ What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by 
the way?” 

They were silent for a moment, not daring to reply. At 
length they acknowledged that they had discussed who 
should be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The petty passions which agitated the hearts even of 
those who were so close to their Master are betrayed by this 
significant incident. Peter had been chosen their head, and 
James and John seemed to enjoy a certain preference. These 
marked distinctions did not fail to arouse a certain envy and 
jealousy among the others. God is master of his gifts ; but 
selfish, vain, self-seeking man, instead of using them for the good 
of all, is ready to use them for his own advantage, and, though 
close to the side of Jesus, he grows restless and self-conscious, 
extols his own merits, refuses to recognize those of others, 
and aspires to the first place. Hence arise bitter disputes, 
rivalries, insults, and the wounds of injured self-love. Jesus 
was not ignorant of these less worthy feelings which dis- 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 487 

turbed the peace and union of his disciples, and he devoted 
the last day, perhaps the last hours, at Capernaum to healing 
them. 

He wished to speak with them privately , 1 and no doubt 
he retired into the upper chamber. Having sat down he 
called the twelve to him and said : 

“If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all 
and the servant of all.” 

* Then he took a little child and set him in the midst of 
them. 

“ Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and 
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall become as this child 
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” 

To be the last, the servant of all, to be humble, to recog¬ 
nize the vanity of one’s own reason, knowledge, strength, 
will, virtue, genius, activity, ambitions, interests, pleasures, and 
glory—in a word, to confess one’s own nothingness ; that is the 
condition to enter and to be great in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
God only hears the humble and the needy, the hungry 
ones who cry to him with a true feeling of their wretchedness. 
This was the special teaching of Jesus, and he reminds the 
Twelve of it by showing them a child, as the symbol of weak¬ 
ness, sincerity, and lowliness. 

The innocence and docility of the child moved his com¬ 
passion, for his sympathy was always aroused by helplessness 
and purity. He took him in his arms and said : 

“Whosoever shall receive one of such children, in my 
name, receiveth me, and whosoever shall receive me receiveth 
not me alone, but him that sent me.” 

Jesus, in his lovingkindness, identifies himself with all 
that is poor, helpless, and unfortunate. 

To assist the weak and to receive them for his sake, as he 

1 Matt, xviii. 1, etc.; Mark ix. 34, etc.; Luke ix. 46. 


488 JESUS CHRIST. 

himself said, is to help and to receive him ; it is to receive 
God himself. , 

This exhortation appears to have troubled the mind of 
one of the Twelve. 

“Master,” said John, “we saw one casting out devils in 
thy name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not us.” 

But Jesus replied, “ Forbid him not, for he that is not 
against you is for you.” 

To do good in the name of Jesus is to have spiritual com¬ 
munion with him, and then, even if we are not outwardly 
associated with the community of his disciples, we are, though 
standing apart, useful helpers in his work. 

“ For whosoever shall give you a cup of water only in my 
name, verily I say unto you he shall not lose his reward.” 

No act of kindness is forgotten in the Kingdom ; but woe 
unto them that shall do evil to those who are tender and 
weak ! 

“ Whosoever shall offend one of these littles ones that 
believe in me,” he added in a warning tone, “ it were better for 
him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were 
cast into the depth of the sea.” 

“Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must 
needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom 
the offence cometh! 

Jesus teaches us to resolutely shun, and to sever from 
us, everything that leads to evil. 

“ If thy hand offend thee,” he said in words of severity 
“ cut it off and cast it from thee ; it is better for thee to enter 
into life maimed, rather than having two hands to be cast 
into the eternal fire. If thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is 
better for thee to enter halt into life, rather than having two 
feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be 
quenched, where the worm dieth not and the fire is net 
quenched. 

“ And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better 



THE WELL OF ZACHARIAS AND ELISABETH, A IN-KARIM 


























































MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 489 

for thee to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather 
than having two eyes to be cast into the Gehenna of fire> 
where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. 

“As every sacrifice is salted with salt to render it incor¬ 
ruptible, so they will be salted with fire and preserved 
by it.” 

These words of Jesus make us feel the anger of his 
goodness. Justice is not so terrible as the mild reproach of 
love. It is a Satanic work, to lead into evil the weak, the 
defenceless little ones. The world, over which Satan has 
dominion, abounds with such offences, such oppressions, and 
such tyranny. The child which Jesus took as a living sym¬ 
bol, represents the whole of mankind with its ignorances 
and prejudices, which are the weakness of reason ; with its 
instincts, which are the weakness of will : with its destitution 
which is the weakness of life. To take advantage of this 
helplessness, to despise it, above all to turn it aside from 
God, who is its true, its only remedy, this is the supreme 
offence. Jesus had the offence, which so roused his indig¬ 
nation, before his very eyes. The people of Galilee had fallen 
a victim to the influential classes, the doctors and the scribes 
who by exerting in turn authority, false teaching, threat, and 
cunning, did all in their power to turn them from him. 
This sight made his holy anger burst forth against them. 
“ Take heed,” he added, “ that ye despise not one of these 
little ones ! ” They possess a heavenly power which protects 
them against their oppressors. “ In heaven their angels do 
always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” 

Never had the righteous innocence, the birthright of the 
weak, been more vividly, more tenderly exalted. 

Jesus was never weary of this subject; it brought out 
his compassion and tenderness, his love and pity, in their 
fulness. 

“ The Son of man,” he continued, “ is come to save that 
which was lost.” He regarded the whole of mankind as a 


490 JESUS CHRIST. 

weak and erring being whom he had come to strengthen and 
reclaim. 

“ How think ye?” he said to his disciples; “if a man have 
an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he 
not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, 
and seeketh that which is gone astray ? And if so be that he 
find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep 
than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.” 

It was thus, then, that the mind of Jesus interpreted the 
never-failing mercy of God. The Father is the good shep¬ 
herd, who does not wish 'one of his flock to perish ; and he 
has sent his Son on the earth to gather them all to his 
fold. 

The true sign of goodness is forgiveness, and Jesus showed 
its beauty to his apostles. 

“If one of thy brothers have trespassed against thee, go 
and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he 
shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother; if he will not 
hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth 
of two or three witnesses every word may be established. 
And if he will not hear you, tell the assembly of brothers, 
tell it unto the church ; and if he will not hear the church, 
let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. 

“Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven : and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be 
loosed in heaven.” 

It is the duty of charity to seek out unweariedly the 
erring brother, even until it encounters declared and immov¬ 
able obstinacy. The man who becomes inflexible in hatred 
and insult no longer belongs to the Church, for he no longer 
has the Spirit of God in him. 

“ Again I say unto you,” said Jesus, “ that if two of you 
shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall 
ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in 
heaven. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 49I 

“ For where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them.” 

These simple words give briefly the very essence of the 
work of Jesus. He is the bond of union of those who are 
joined together in his name, and he is in the midst of them ; 
his living Spirit cries aloud in them, and invokes the Father, 
through whose mercy it obtains all things. Jesus was 
working towards this coming together of his followers, this 
universal assembly, and the disciples, who surrounded him, 
and who received in full measure of his wisdom, power, 
and love, already realised the unity of his Church, which still 
exists at this present day with unlimited power to forgive 
sins. 

The Spirit which inspires the Church is mercy and 
pity, and by obedience to this Spirit she will continue the 
work of her Master in mankind, which, constantly sinning, 
has constant need of pardon. 

A question asked by Peter elicited this declaration 
from Jesus concerning the duty and the power of the 
Church. 

“ Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me,” he 
asked, “ and I forgive him ? till seven times ? ” 

The infinite pity of the Master offers a striking contrast 
to the niggardly pity of man : 

“ I say not unto thee, Until seven times : but, Until 
seventy times seven.” 

This contains the whole spirit of the Kingdom. Jesus 
declares it by an impressive parable : 

“ The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, 
which would take account of his servants. At first one was 
brought unto him which owed six thousand talents. But for¬ 
asmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be 
sold, and his wife, and children, and payment to be made. The 
servant fell on his knees and besought his master, saying, 


492 


JESUS CHRIST. 


Have patience with me, I beseech thee, and I will pay thee 
all. The lord of that servant was moved with compassion, 
and loosed him, and forgave him the debt; but as he went out 
from his Lord’s house, he met one of his fellow-servants which 
owed him an hundred pence. He laid hands on him, and 
took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. 
The debtor fell on his knees and said, Have patience 
with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went 
and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt. So 
when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were very 
sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. 
Then his lord, after that he had called the first servant, 
said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all thy 
debt, because thou desiredst me. Shouldest not thou also 
have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity 
on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him up 
until he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise 
shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye forgive not 
every one his brother their trespasses.” 

The Kingdom of Jesus is the kingdom of love, and of 
pardon, which is an indispensable form of love. Whoever has 
been incorporated in it, is pardoned of God, and henceforth his 
duty is to pardon his fellows. The pity of God is infinite ; 
ours should be boundless like his. Woe to the man who shuts 
out all feeling of pity, for he who is inexorable will encounter 
the inexorable justice of God. 

No virtue demands more heroism. Man seems by nature 
implacable from his birth ; if he cannot avenge himself, he 
keeps deep down in his heart the bitter feeling of resentment, 
and, by not forgiving, he nourishes the desire for vengeance. 
Jesus exacts this heroism, and, by requiring it of man, he 
reminds him that he must be like God. 

We see with what trusting confidence the disciples 
questioned him; with what gentleness he taught, corrected, 
and exalted them. 


MINISTRY IN GALILEE. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 493 

Never before had man heard such lessons, or been 
incited to such virtues. It was thus in the midst of a world 
given up to all forms of pride, divisions, hatreds, oppression, 
and violence, that Jesus impressed on the souls of his dis¬ 
ciples the first features of a new Kingdom, based on humility 
and gentleness, pity and forgiveness, respect and reverence 
for all the weak and the oppressed. Such a design requires 
some other spirit than the corrupted spirit of man, and 
explains the mysterious words which conclude the dis¬ 
course : 

“ Salt is good,” it preserves, it prevents decay. Have 
in you the Spirit, which is the salt of the soul : “ Do 
not let it lose its savour.” It will give you peace. “ Have 
peace one with another .” 1 This was the last discourse of 
Jesus at Capernaum, spoken on the eve of his quitting 
Galilee, and setting out for Jerusalem 

1 Mark ix. 49. 


END OF VOL. I. 
















































































































































































